Enclosure for Electric Vehicle

(Manufacture to customer drawings)

This client initially approached us to help them source the castings for a high voltage enclosure they were developing for an electric vehicle. At this stage they had not finalised the design and we were able to assist them in evaluating different design concepts and advise on some considerations for “Design for Manufacture”. As we continued with the project the client also asked if we could assist in additional components including plastic moldings out of specialist materials and also some zinc plated pressings.

One particular difference we could make is that we were able to offer a cost effective solution for a “high pressure die casting” process (with all the design and quality benefits that offers) despite the client’s current low volume needs. Originally their thinking was they would need to adopt a low volume inferior casting process because they could not justify high volume manufacturing techniques. As it happened we were able to “tool up” and supply 250 units at a total cost that was lower than supplying the same machined castings from a UK prototype supplier using low volume casting techniques.  This is because generally our production tooling costs are about 50% of what you would expect to pay in Europe.

As the project matured we were also asked to assemble the enclosure in China and perform leak testing (pressure decay) so a validated unit could be delivered to the UK.

Our services for this project included project management, manufacturing and product design elements.