Bridge Tooling and Molding

Prototype to Production

Bridge tooling can span the gap from prototype to production injection molded parts with inexpensive, medium volume production parts while maintaining lead times similar to prototype molds and molding.  Bridge tools provide sufficient levels of production parts to get your project going fast.  They are often perfect for filling initial sales orders or solving problems with existing products where a new part design is needed.  Their versatility provides countless applications.  For many companies they serve well as the prototype and the production mold for the life of the product.

How Bridge Tools are Manufactured

Bridge tools can be manufactured as standard insert sets, like M.U.D. or F.I.T.S., or as free standing injection molds.  They are often manufactured from pre-hardened tool steels, like P20, P20HH or NAK80.

Bridge Tooling Reduces Cost

Bridge molds can be useful in high volume production scenarios as they provide extra time for high-quality, multi-cavity production molds to be manufactured.  Knowledge gained from bridge molding can be used to improve the productivity and longevity of future production molds.  Additionally, the financial savings generated by not rushing high-volume injection molds into production, often pays for the bridge tooling.

Bridge Tooling Capacity

Production from a bridge mold can range from thousands to hundreds of thousands of parts in a week or two.

Bridge Tooling Capability

Bridge tools are manufactured similar to high-volume production molds, except cost and lead-time are prioritized over longevity.  They can contain all the same features and technology as production molds.