Production-Ready Prototypes From PTI Engineered Plastics Change the Game for Automotive Product-Development

CLINTON TOWNSHIP, Mich., March 5 -- PTI Engineered Plastics today announced the launch of its P3(TM) process, a proprietary capability that creates ready-for-production prototypes with tooling durable enough to mold and support substantial production quantities. The P3 process leapfrogs conventional approaches to product development and offers a no-limit tooling and manufacturing process for customers requiring fast market entry.

"When you buy a traditional prototype you are only getting a prototype, and there are still several steps to complete before you can go into production," said Mark Rathbone, CEO of PTI Engineered Plastics. "With P3, the same tool that provides the prototype for testing and validation can be used for production. In some low-volume scenarios the one tool is used for the entire production run."

The P3 process provides accelerated time to market, lowers overall development costs, and creates saleable, injection-molded products without compromise to the product design or material of choice. The primary benefits of P3 include:

  -- speed and time compression;
  -- the flexibility to accommodate engineering changes quickly and
     accurately; and
  -- the ability to handle complex shapes and tolerances without change or
     compromise to the part design.

The P3 process is ideal for highly detailed, high-tolerance molded products and assemblies, and provides a valuable alternative to rapid injection molding and rapid prototyping. Customers are able to stretch program budgets further and reduce the number of manufacturing processes it takes to bring a product to market successfully and economically.

PTI Engineered Plastics is a privately held, full-service plastic injection molder specializing in getting customers' products to market ahead of the competition. With approximately 50 percent of the company's business comprised of prototyping and short-run manufacturing, PTI customers typically have a vision for their product and a requirement to get their product to market first with no compromises to design or material. The company currently employs 150, with growth to 200 employees targeted by 2012. To accommodate increasing demand for its services, the 25-year-old company will move into a larger, newly constructed engineering and manufacturing facility in summer 2008.

For more information visit www.teamPTI.com.