News Release

Soligen's Parts Now^® Service Delivers Accurate, Functional Turbocharger Housings in Record Time
-- Rapid Prototyping Methods Unable to Yield the Complex Parts --

NORTHRIDGE, CA--February 28, 1996- Soligen Technologies, Inc. announced that its Parts Now unit has reached another milestone in becoming the premier supplier of functional metal parts made directly from a customer's CAD file. It has delivered complex turbocharger housing castings made of ductile iron. "Soligen's proprietary Direct Shell Production Casting (DSPC^®) technology enabled us to produce these parts for Holset Engineering, without the traditional need to produce production tooling first," said Yehoram Uziel, President and CEO of Soligen. "Previous attempts by Holset to produce temporary tooling using several rapid prototyping methods had failed to yield a functional part."

"We were under a great deal of time pressure to deliver prototype turbochargers to our customer, a diesel engine manufacturer," said Richard White of Holset Engineering of Huddersfield, England. "I was impressed with the timely performance of Soligen's Parts Now team," continued Mr. White. "We have sectioned one of the turbocharger housings made by Soligen's DSPC. The volute gas passages were measured to within five percent (5%) of our computer aided design contours, which compares very favorably with any conventional casting technology. Being a patternless CAD-driven metal casting process, and given the time constraints of our program, DSPC proved to be the only viable solution to quickly produce these turbocharger housings."

Utilizing its DSPC technology, Soligen is able to produce a first article metal part bypassing the traditional need for tooling. Additionally, Parts Now produces production tooling for larger runs of metal castings from the same CAD file as the approved part. This results in a substantial savings of both cost and time to market. By combining these two operations, Parts Now becomes a single source for out-sourcing of metal parts. Soligen's DSPC technology, a proprietary fabrication process for metal parts, produces ceramic molds for metal casting directly from a CAD file.