Goldilocks and the Three 3D Prototyped Masks

Goldilocks and the Three 3D Prototyped Masks

For many Mighty Hook customers, our incredibly large and diverse line of stock hanging, racking and masking solutions meet their needs and improve productivity. But sometimes, a custom engineered solution is the best option. Here’s an example of how we used innovative, rapid 3D prototyping to save a powder coating customer significant time and money on a complex custom masking project. 

This powder coater was struggling with masking a specific diameter around three hexagonal flanges. Each mask had to fit over an existing yellow plastic plug, and an exact fit was critical. The masks had to be in the form of caps, since the design specs required that no powder coating could touch the area underneath. They previously purchased other stock masking products and even tried to develop their own custom solution, but nothing worked.

In early 2020, the customer contacted our sales department. Together, we discussed the project scope, constraints and goals. After communicating back and forth with our expert mechanical design engineers, we agreed on using injection molding to model the prototype, but the results didn’t have the strength for the job.

Committed to our customer’s complete satisfaction, our engineers rapidly developed a second prototype using flexible TPU (thermoplastic polyurethane), and produced 3D printed models. Even though multiple changes were required, the investment and turnaround time were minimal. This was a significant improvement over purchasing and custom tooling for a single injection mold. Refinements took hours instead of days, and the caps had a Goldilocks fit—not too loose or constrictive, and just right.

This powder coater experienced how it all comes together with Mighty Hook: our vast engineering expertise, improvements in their production line, and our commitment to improving quality, cost and speed. They ordered a full production run and made these masking caps a recurring purchase. 

If you have a custom masking challenge that’s un-bearably difficult, let’s talk.