Military Cast Spare Parts in "Fasterestest" Time

The U.S. Department of Defense typically waits up to 12 months to receive spare parts when these parts are cast by suppliers that use the traditional approach of creating the tooling, then casting the part.

Clinkenbeard (clinkenbeard.com), a producer of complex castings and machined parts, takes a different approach to their process, one they say is so efficient that they had to create their own prototype of a name for it: “Fasterestest.” It proved the speed of this process through a feasibility study with the Advanced Technology Institute (aticorp.com) and the American Metalcasting Consortium (amc.aticorp.org). Those two are collaborating on a program to develop robotic technologies as a way to speed production of government cast parts and so ran a test using the Clinkenbeard method. Instead of creating the tooling for part production, Clinkenbeard uses subtractive manufacturing with CNC machines, turning sand cores and molds into large and complex castings more quickly—as in 90% more quickly. The process produced parts for the Department of Defense in as little as six days during the study, while reducing capital investment by 35%, part costs by 20% and cycle time by 25%.

That sounds like “fasterestest” to us.