Casting Manufacturer Complements Traditional Methods with Additive

Embracing additive manufacturing allowed casting manufacturer D. W. Clark to slash some tooling production costs up to 90% versus traditional methods, enabling part development that attracts new business. “Customers come to us with parts that they’ve run out of manufacturing options for that we’ve been able to do with 3D printing,” says D. W. Clark President Jeff Burek. “As a result of adding additive to the shop, our [book of business] probably grew, easily I would say 15% larger.” “A lot of the customers that we now have, we have because we gain their trust using additive and then they place additional business for parts that might use traditional [manufacturing], and that might be higher volume parts. We did the prototypes with additive and then you move into higher production tooling,” says Burek.