We have a foundry (supplier) who made some parts for me. My company paid $20k for the tooling and they produced about 20 ductile iron castings. After our Gamma build, I saw areas for improved cost. We redesigned the parts to remove some machining, then we changed the print on the castings to reflect the layout reports. (they were features we didn't care about or could live with.)
After all these changes we went back to the supplier for re-quote. I mean we changed the prints, they should re-quote it even if they were here and approved the changes we made.
We were expecting the cost per part to go down as we removed work content.
Shock, the price was the same on one part and the other went up.
On top of all that, they charged us another $5k for "Tooling and Fixture Mod's"
When I challenged them on the additional tooling charges, they first said it was because of all the 'engineering changes' over the project. So I asked them to produce the drawings that had changed, rev by rev so I could justify the added tooling costs. They said they would, but then came back and said it 'OK' the tooling would be alright the way it was.
In the meantime...(here is gets good) their sales rep comes in and sits with the buyer and explains that the tooling was 'Prototype' and they needed the $5k to make it into "Production" tooling. I've been working with foundries for 25 years and they have always told me they don't make 'prototype' tooling because the process is exactly the same for prototype as it is for production.
So, they call the foundry and before the foundry can answer, the sales rep leads the question "So, Bill, we built that tooling out of plastic didn't we? And we need that money to convert it to aluminum right?" and you get the idea of what happened next.
My question to you all is a simple one... could they actually have a plastic core box? Could they really have made prototype tooling?
Prototype Tooling for a Foundry?
Re: Prototype Tooling for a Foundry?
