reviews R&D Guy found useful
Bal Seal develops a unique radial spring that can be used as a quick-connect. If you have an application that needs a quick connect but only have limited space, take a look at what they do. Everything they make is a custom product unique to the customer's requirement and takes time to develop. It would be nice if they offered off the shelf components where I could adapt my system to the dimensional requirements, that would save a lot of time in the early prototype stage.
Strengths: Unique quick connection technology
Needs to improve: No off the shelf components
Accellent is large contract manufacturer that have many subsidiaries under its umbrella. Their services include molding, machining and anything you can think of in between for medical device and other industries. Each subsidiary has its strengths but there is a lack of communication between each one. Cost wise, you won't benefit from them having all these subsidiaries, because each one will mark up the cost for their services, which is passed along to you the customer. I found them to be expensive to do business with, and their expertise is no better than the lower cost contract manufacturer.
Strengths: Full turnkey capabilities
Needs to improve: Too many subsidiaries that do not communicate well with each other
Merit Medical is a great OEM for your medical device fluid delivery needs. Before you decide to design your own system, take a look at their product catalog to see if what you're trying to do already exist. They're really good at making their products customized to your needs. Also, a lot of their offerings comes packaged and sterilized, so you don't have to waste time and money developing a custom packaging, and doing shipping and sterilization validation. Their pricing isn't the cheapest out there, but it is reasonable.
Strengths: Large selection of fluid delivery type systems for medical use, customize products, fully packaged
Needs to improve: not the cheapest medical supplier
Lee Spring is a decent spring vendor with large selections of various spring types (compression, extensions, torsion, etc). Their website allows you to quickly filter down to the type of spring you need. Their are better spring websites out their such as Century Spring where the search, checkout, and CAD model download is easier to navigate. Also, Lee Spring pricing seems much higher than others, so do yourself a favor and shop around before using them.
Strengths: Website search for springs, large selection of springs
Needs to improve: Pricing
RevZero is a decent contract manufacturer (CM) for small to medium volume machined component needs. They're willing to take on the smaller jobs that the major CMs won't be willing to do at a reasonable cost. At higher volumes, that advantage goes away as the larger CMs are just as competitive with component costs. One disadvantage of using RevZero is that they sometimes run into capacity issues where they're either a little late with their production/prototype deliveries, or they have have long lead times.
Strengths: Swiss Screw Machining, CNC Machining, pricing at small volumes
Needs to improve: Meeting estimated delivery schedule, lead time
RMS is the go to contract manufacturer for medical device machined components. They service many of the major medical device companies and have expertise in making implants, bone screws, and medical instruments. They're a well run company with a good quality system, designated manufacturing engineers, and program managers. If you're looking for the cheapest vendor, look somewhere else. But if quality, expertise, and reliability is important to you, then definitely consider RMS.
Strengths: High volume tight tolerance machining, medical implants, medical instruments, quality control
Needs to improve: Prototyping, low volume development
Century Spring is a great place to go if you're in need of a specific spring (spring type, size, spring rate, etc). They have a vast selection of springs and their website have filters so you can quickly narrow down your search. The pricing and checkout process is easy - simply select the spring you want, specify the quantity needed, and add it to the shopping cart. The price of the springs vary and is based on the quantity ordered, the larger the order quantity the lower the price.
Strengths: Good website, fast quote, fast delivery
Needs to improve: None - it's a spring company
Qosina has all the luer fitting, syringe, check valve, and hose line connections you'll need for your lab or medical device application. Often, they'll have sterilization information on their components so you'll know, for example, if you can gamma or eto sterilize the component. Their website will list all the components they carry, but you'll need to request a quote from them to get the pricing. Unfortunately, you can't just add what you want to a shopping cart and specify the quantity needed - In my opinion, they should have this feature to make it more streamline.
Strengths: Large selection of medical device components, tubes, fittings.
Needs to improve: Must request a quote before ordering parts.
McMaster is the go-to component supplier for off the shelf parts you need. They carry almost everything from raw materials to vacuums. If you need something for your project, most likely McMaster has in stock. They ship out really fast, most of the time the same day if you order by 3 pm. And if you're in the West Coast, most likely it will arrive the next day.
Strengths: Vast selection of off the shelf components, fast shipment, good customer service, good purchasing website
Needs to improve: May not always carry the unique length/size hardware you need
I used Spacesonic for a sheet metal enclosure design. The enclosure had many PEM nuts, standoffs, vent holes, louvers, etc. They were able to make it to the drawing print with high accuracy. To ensure accuracy, they prefer to have both a drawing print and CAD assembly.
Pricing was very reasonable considering the amount of detail involved and the low prototype volume I needed. I would definitely recommend these guys for your sheet metal requirements.
Strengths: Affordable, good lead times, good quality parts
Needs to improve: I haven't come across any yet.
We used Valmark for an electrical overlay membrane switch design in which they did an excellent job fabricating for us. They sent us a drawing schematic prior to any work being done for approval sign off. They were thorough with their process and patient with us on the changes we needed to make. I would definitely use them again for future projects.
Strengths: Good communication, thorough process, good quality products
Needs to improve: Lead times can be a bit long, but I haven't worked with other companies that have similar capabilities to compare against.
When you're looking for a unique size fastener that McMaster doesn't carry, Olander is a good source that may have it.
Strengths: Good component supplier for fasteners, dowel pins, washers, etc.
Needs to improve: Their website needs to be improved and is difficult to navigate. Most of the time I just call them and get an over the phone quote.
Pulse Systems specialty is on laser cutting and welding. In my experience with them, I had them quote a prototype run where I needed laser cutting on stainless steel tubes. Compared to other laser cutting vendors, I found their quote to be high and their lead time longer. I've also used them for swiss screw machining for a production component - The piece part price was reasonable but they were not always on time with the delivery dates.
Strengths: Laser welding, laser cutting
Needs to improve: Long lead time, a bit expensive
We used Precision Swiss to develop a small precision screw for production use with volumes of 5K annually. They're very knowledgeable in Swiss Screw machining and produced very nice parts for us. They worked closely with us to develop the screw we needed and tried many configurations until we got the right features on the screw for our application. I would consider them as a medium size contract manufacturer. Their lead times and costs are reasonable for production parts. The one knock I have is that I think they could do a better job communicating to us on the status of the job they're running for us- there were a few times where finished goods were shipped to us without an email courtesy to let us know.
Strengths: Good contract manufacturer with swiss screw capabilities.
Needs to improve: Could be better with client communication.
I've used HT Machining for over 10 years for my prototyping needs and the reason why is because they are very good at what they do - provide accurate machined component in metals and plastics. I've used them for both small and large components, fixtures and prototype parts. They're a friendly crew who take pride in their craft. Lead times are usually short, and they have a good track record of delivering on time. Cost is very reasonable for the Bay Area.
Strengths: Good small and large part machining capabilities, accurate parts, very reasonable costs, good track record for delivering parts on time.
Needs to improve: It's a machine shop so don't expect to do large volume machining with them.
Britt is a smaller company that has good in-house expertise on metal injection molding. Mold tooling and piece part prices for the MIM components are reasonable but it does take time for them to get the parts from concept to production. This could be the nature of the MIM process, as this is the first and only MIM vendor I have used, and have no other MIM experience to compare against. The parts they produce are good, structurally and dimensionally. Their quality department could be better in regards to organization and documentation.
Strengths: Good MIM company with many years of expertise, works closely with customers, good communication
Needs to improve: Quality documentation
Protomold has a subsidiary called Firstcut that does rapid prototype machining. They specialize in machining plastic components in which they have a vast amount of materials to choose from. They can also do limited metals such as aluminum. They're quoting process is fantastic - upload a CAD model you want prototyped to their website and within a day (sometimes less) they will send you a quote. The whole process is automated and very streamlined. For plastic components, I'm very impressed on some of the detailed components they can make at a relatively low cost. I've almost completely stopped using other rapid prototyping methods such as SLA, SLS, FDM, etc because I can get an actual plastic component in the right material at the same cost and same lead time. Firstcust does have some limitations, for instance, they can't make a male thread based on their proprietary process (everything is CNC'd) and there are certain geometries that they can't make such as an undercut.
Strengths: Fast, cost effective, easy quote process
Needs to improve: Limited metals to choose from
I've mainly used Peridot for prototyping purposes but they also do production. They have Swiss screw , laser cutting, laser welding, and machining capabilities. I use them for more complex prototyping where local machine shops wouldn't be able to produce the part or assembly for me. Their lead times are longer and they're more expensive than a typical machine shop but they have a good track record for being on time and they can tackle the more difficult jobs. The quality of the parts they produce are very good and they can easily setup small pilot runs.
Strengths: Prototyping, laser cutting, laser welding, machining
Needs to improve: Longer lead time
I've used WEP (Wright Engineered Plastic) as a vendor for a handful of projects with various companies I've worked for in the past. WEP is a very competent molding vendor with reasonably priced molds. They do their tooling both domestically and overseas, but all the molding is done in their Santa Rosa, CA facility. The benefit to this is that customers can save cost by having the tooling done overseas, but don't have to worry about quality control of the parts being produced off the mold because the molding is done domestically.
WEP is also a good assembly house, where they can take your molded component(s) and further process/assemble and package it in a cleanroom environment.
Strengths: Good molding vendor, good product assembly in cleanroom environment, good quality system
Needs to improve: None so far.
We used them for a packaging project because of their initial quoted low cost and fast development time. The project hit numerous delays due to packaging failures, and their lack of expertise in packaging was apparent. I can't comment on their expertise in other disciplines, but I would not use them again for any future packaging projects.
Strengths: Hantel has a dedicated group of engineer(s) that they will assign to your project.
Needs to improve: Hantel is advertised as a turn key company, where they will design, manufacture, and package your product. They have their hands in too many disciplines, and are not focused enough in one particular discipline to be considered "experts" in that field. Their engineers are young and lack experience, but can make up for it with their dedication to the project. Their management team lacked leadership to oversee our project to keep it on track.
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