Case Study: East/West Industries reduces tooling time and cost with Stratasys Fortus 450mc

East/West Industries cuts tool production time by 2 days with Stratasys

East/West Industries, a supplier for major aerospace manufacturers, faced production constraints as demand grew. Their CNC machine shop was a bottleneck, with the need to create workholding fixtures adding to lead times and backlogs. To avoid the high cost and space requirements of additional CNC machines, the company turned to vendor Stratasys and invested in a Fortus 450mc industrial 3D printer.

By using the Stratasys Fortus 450mc to 3D print workholding fixtures and other tools, East/West Industries reduced tool production time by an average of two days and cut tool costs by 50%. This solution increased overall product readiness by two weeks and freed their CNC equipment to focus on value-added parts. The versatility of the Stratasys printer also enabled new applications like creating prototypes and surrogate parts, ensuring first-time quality for their customers.

East/West Industries