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News Release
Chicago Pneumatics Chooses Soligen's Parts Now ® to compress time to market-- Production Order for the First 500 Sets of a NewPower Tool-- NORTHRIDGE, CA--June 20, 1996- Soligen Technologies, Inc. (AMEX:SGT.EC) announced today that its Parts Now ® unit has entered into the production phase of providing Chicago Pneumatic Tool Company, Inc., subsidiary of Atlas Copco, Inc., with cast and machined components for a new power tool. "Converting this new product from an idea to the stage of serial manufacturing was carried out in a seamless process of rapid manufacturing," said Yehoram Uziel, Soligen's President & CEO. "Utilizing our proprietary Direct Shell Production Casting (DSPC® ) technology, first article metal parts were produced within days directly from the CAD design file. Additionally, these parts were able to be functionally tested before any pattern or tooling were required. With the patternless DSPC process Soligen enabled Chicago Pneumatic's engineering team to concurrently evaluate several design modifications and test them functionally."
As soon as the design cycle was completed, Soligen used its DSPC technology to produce the production tooling from the same CAD file of the approved parts. Within days, the production tooling was used at Soligen's foundry to produce additional castings, identical to the DSPC made parts. Chicago Pneumatic, a manufacturer of power tools, has taken advantage of Soligen's proprietary DSPC technology to quickly produce functional prototypes for other projects as well. However, this is the first production order, which encompasses Soligen's exclusive "one-stop-shop" process. "We take it as a strong vote of confidence that Chicago Pneumatic, one of our original customers decided that out-sourcing their casting and machining production to Parts Now is the way to maximize their success," stated Yehoram Uziel. Soligen will handle the production run of the aluminum tool sets, at its aluminum foundry.
Soligen's DSPC ® , technology is a proprietary fabrication process for metal parts, that produces ceramic molds for metal casting directly from a CAD file. By this method, Soligen is able to produce a first article metal part that bypasses the traditional need for tooling. Additionally, it produces production tooling for larger runs of metalcastings from the same CAD file as the approved part. Soligen has combined its DSPC technology with conventional casting methods and Computerized Numerical Control(CNC) machine practices. By combining these three production elements, the Company has created Parts Now ® , the first "one-stop-shop" for functional metal parts that are made directly from a CAD file and are ready for assembly. As a result, Parts Now has become a single source for out-sourcing of metal parts. The benefits to Soligen's customers include substantial savings of both costs and time to market.