Case Study: Kelly Manufacturing Company achieves 93% faster lead time and 5% lower part cost with Stratasys Fortus 3D printing

Turn For The Better Direct Digital Manufacturing Reduces Instrument Part Cost 5% And Lead Time 93%

Kelly Manufacturing Company, maker of the R.C. Allen line of aircraft instruments, faced quality and lead-time problems with urethane-cast toroid housings that required hand sanding, could not reliably meet tight dimensional specs, and took three to four weeks for 500 units. Rapid PSI introduced Kelly to direct digital manufacturing using Stratasys Fortus 3D Production Systems (Fortus 900mc) and ULTEM 9085 material to address those challenges.

Using Stratasys Fortus FDM production, Rapid PSI now prints 500 toroid housings in a single run, cutting lead time from weeks to three days (a 93% reduction), improving dimensional accuracy to ±0.003 in (0.0762 mm), eliminating tooling and hand sanding, and reducing per-piece cost by 5%. The ULTEM 9085 material also delivers superior heat and FST performance, and the Stratasys-based solution enabled more affordable, production-grade prototyping and faster R&D for Kelly Manufacturing Company.

Kelly Manufacturing Company

Justin Kelly

President