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Inclag

Inclag

Turbo Monkey
Sep 9, 2001
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MA
Was at the Design 2 Part trade show yesterday and happened to cross a Mid-Western die/casting manufacturer with a display that happened to have a Fox thru-axle fork lower lying on their table. It obviously caught my eye and we got talking. Turns out that the company manufacturers some of the lowers for Fox stateside for a piece part cost of ~$11 a pop. Tooling on the other hand was high as to be expected at ~$300K.

No real real moral to the story here, but thought it was pretty neat. Would love to see that tooling in action. Guess I know who to call if I ever get a Fox and mung up the lowers :D
 
jonKranked

jonKranked

Detective Dookie
Nov 10, 2005
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tooling is ALWAYS expensive. Did you find out how many units the tooling was for and how many cycles it would last?


edit: the per unit price he gave you, was that just for the materials and processing?
 
S

Steve M

Turbo Monkey
Mar 3, 2007
1,991
45
Whistler
Front quarter panels for a Toyota Camry/Aurion cost the company $11.30au each to manufacture (including paint). They cost about $850-900 retail to replace.
 
Inclag

Inclag

Turbo Monkey
Sep 9, 2001
2,752
442
MA
jonKranked said:
tooling is ALWAYS expensive. Did you find out how many units the tooling was for and how many cycles it would last?


edit: the per unit price he gave you, was that just for the materials and processing?
Click to expand...
Derp!

Of course tooling is going to be expensive. 0 draft areas and a massive pull.

Super cool and I would love to see that tooling in action. I'm actually having some tool for a part I designed coming in from China in a few weeks. Has 2 massive side actions, with one of the coring features being 70" in length (not the core of the part itself, but the actual tool pull). Can't wait to drive up to NH to take a look at it.

Anyway, that $11 price was the actual piece part cost shipped to Fox. The lowers were painted white as well so my suspicion was that included finishing and post op (hole tapping) operations. Guy said they ship out about 300 of them a week. I'd suspect the tool life is somewhere around 1/2 million cycles since mag will allow for a much longer life than alu. The guy couldn't believe there was a market for such a high end suspension system on a bike.
 
jonKranked

jonKranked

Detective Dookie
Nov 10, 2005
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I was just trying to figure out if that $11 per unit price included tooling costs or if that was paid for up front (much more likely). But yea 2 jobs ago I visited some of our plants it was cool to see the tooling, even if it was just for IM, thermoforming, and rotatory molding. There were a few instances when we were on a time crunch, and we had them make us a set of copper tooling for thermoforming to use until the alu tooling was ready.
 
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