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Rapid Sheet Metal, Inc., specializing in rapid turnaround of sheet metal prototypes, has announced that its new in-house powder coating and silk-screening lines are now in full-production, enabling the company to meet even tighter turnaround times for its customers.
"When it comes to rapid manufacturing, every day, every hour and every minute really counts," says James Jacobs, President of Rapid Sheet Metal. "By bringing powder coating and silk-screening in-house, we can literally cut days off delivery lead times."
The standard lead time for each process is two days, but because the processes are in-house, even more compressed schedules are possible. To illustrate this point, Jacobs described a recent urgent prototype order for critical parts which Rapid Sheet Metal filled in 24 hours. "The customer called us at 11 am on a Thursday morning with an incredibly hot job. We engineered, manufactured, powder-coated and shipped the parts the next day for Saturday delivery so that the customer could build beta machines over the weekend" said Jacobs. "That never would have been possible before we added the powder-coating facility."
When they made the decision to bring the sheet metal finishing process in-house in early 2007, Rapid Sheet Metal decided to use powder-coating instead of a wet-finishing process because of its consistency, versatility and its environmental friendliness. Unlike a wet paint process, powder coating requires no solvents and any powder overspray is completely recyclable. To ensure a state of the art facility, Rapid Sheet Metal hired a first-class coating specialist with over 30 years of experience in coating and silk-screening to design and oversee the construction and acquisition of the best available equipment. After three months of limited production ramp-up, Rapid Sheet Metal fully added the capability to its rapid production process in January, 2008.
Rapid Sheet Metal carries over 30 coating powders in stock, including blacks, whites, grays, beiges and even safety orange. They can handle parts up to six feet in length with the ability to mask hardware and geometry areas. Their new 1440 dpi printer allows the company to create high resolution artwork and silk screens for any sized part. They can also match ink to Pantone color specifications, and create multiple
color screens.
About Rapid Sheet Metal Inc.
Rapid Sheet Metal (rapidsheetmetal.com) focuses strictly on providing sheet metal prototypes and time sensitive short run fabrications to new product developers and engineers. Typical quote response time is under 24 hours and most parts are shipped in one to two weeks. A 48-hour fast expedite prototype sheet metal service is also available. Parts such as brackets, racks, housings, and enclosures are fabricated to data from Solidworks, Pro/E, Inventor, KeyCreator/ Cadkey, SpaceClaim and other 3D CAD data sources from stainless steel, cold rolled steel and aluminum.
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