At Polyhistor International, we’re always looking for every possible way to make your project more efficient and cost-effective. It’s part of our collaborative mindset—we view all of our customers as true partners. We’re committed to enabling their success in any way we can, whether through custom order options or design for manufacturing guidance.
One behind-the-scenes strategy we use to improve project economics is custom tooling. If we order custom tooling for your project, you probably won’t even realize it. It may not appear in your quote or come up in a kickoff call, but it can make a significant difference to your project’s bottom line.
Learn what we mean by custom tooling and why it can be such a powerful driver of efficiency and cost savings.
What Is “Custom Tooling” at Polyhistor?
When we talk about custom tooling at our precision machine shop, we’re referring to cutting tools like custom end mills that are designed specifically for your part geometry or material. While we always use off-the-shelf tooling whenever possible, challenging features or tight tolerances may mean custom tooling is the best option.
We occasionally make simple custom tools ourselves, but most often we source them from trusted third-party suppliers. Our long-standing relationships with these toolmakers allow us to move quickly and get exactly what we need without delay or miscommunication.
The result is clear: better performance on the shop floor. With custom tools, we can combine operations, reduce setups, and achieve a better surface finish during cutting operations. All of this adds up to faster, more reliable precision machining.
Why Custom Tooling Makes Clear Economic Sense
The driver of any custom tooling purchase is always cost savings, and this strategy is most economical in high-volume CNC machining. Even small time savings per part can lead to major efficiency gains when you’re producing a large number of components.
Custom tools do come with upfront costs, but those costs are typically a fraction of the long-term savings enabled by faster production. In some cases, custom tooling reduces production time so dramatically that it reshapes a project’s entire cost structure.
If you’re partnering with Polyhistor for prototyping but planning a larger production run soon, be sure to share your roadmap. We can help you prepare for that scale from day one by investing in custom tooling early on to ensure a smooth, cost-efficient transition to higher volumes.
How Custom Tooling Changes Your Project
We don’t always discuss custom tooling explicitly with customers. Instead, it’s often a part of our behind-the-scenes efforts to optimize our pricing and production. Our engineering background enables us to devise solutions to problems customers may never even know existed.
We do understand that time is critical in our industry, and that always factors into our decisions. Sourcing a custom tool can add a small amount of time to the front end of a project, but that’s almost always outweighed by the gains in machining speed and reliability. Many of our customers are surprised (and delighted) by how quickly we’re able to deliver complex parts thanks to thoughtful tooling decisions made early in the process.
Ready to Optimize Your Next Project?
Custom tooling is just one of the many ways we add value to your manufacturing project. Whether you’re looking for help with design for assembly, rapid prototyping services, or long-term production, Polyhistor is ready to help you move faster and more cost-effectively.
Request a quote today to see what our Jacksonville machine shop can do for your next project!