Inkjet & Digital Printing
Prototyping is the driving force behind great cars
Tuesday 01. April 2014 - Mercury Customs is a leading manufacturer of high-end custom motorcycles and components. With a heavy emphasis on groundbreaking design, Mercury Customs takes pride in helping passionate customers put their creative visions on the road.
Like many companies in the custom motorcycle industry, Mercury Customs was looking for a way to expedite its custom part design process so that customer orders could be filled faster. Before a custom part reaches the clients hands it is sketched, modeled, reviewed and in many cases revised. This process can take months – longer than most customers would like to wait.
“With many projects, we weren’t delivering parts to our customers fast enough. Delays were due in large part to third-party outsourcing and other circumstances out of our control,” said Joe Takai, principal for Mercury Customs. “We needed to find a way to streamline our process and give our customers a more concrete schedule for project completion.”
The Dimension Solution
In order to streamline its design process, Mercury Customs decided to try a new tool in their shop – a Dimension 3D printer. “We were very impressed with the capabilities of the Dimension 3D printer,” Takai said. “We no longer rely on third-party vendors in the design process and our customers are reaping the benefits.”
The Dimension 3D printer enabled Mercury Customs to create custom accessories and parts for their customers faster, cheaper and more efficiently. By eliminating time-intensive modeling methods, such as injection molding and third-party outsourcing, Mercury Customs has cut the time it takes to fulfill custom part orders by months. The Dimension 3D printer also enabled Mercury Customs to make more precise models on the first run, allowing them to more accurately estimate project completion dates to customers. “With the 3D printer in our shop, we have greater control over the final product, as well as the overall cost and timing associated with it. Now our process is so efficient that we can ship some product orders in one week,” says Takai.
In addition to saving time and money, Mercury Customs is developing products that would not be possible without the Dimension 3D printer. For example, the company created a unique proprietary LED light bar -the Prolite – within the arc of a fender. This part would have been impossible to create solely with injection molding. Mercury Customs not only used the Dimension 3D printer to design this complex part, it is used to manufacture it as well. The company plans to further test the Dimension 3D printer in this way, as it strives to deliver the most innovative custom designs on the market.