Beyond Design

Advanced Sheet Metal Manufacturing at Ford

July 8, 2013

“Product development in certain stages is always looking to make sheet metal parts.”

Ford Freeform Fabrication Technology (photo from Ford's YouTube video)

The video below shows a first-of-its-kind prototyping technology developed by Ford called F3T (Ford Freeform Fabrication Technology). Their product development cycles always include sheet metal (the final production material) prototypes which, in the past, have included 6-8 weeks for the production of a prototype tool. They developed this new technology to be able to fabricate custom sheet metal parts in a matter of hours for low-volume production applications. It eliminates the need for a die and uses a sort of embossing similar to a 3D printer. You can read more on the F3T capabilities hereand check out the video below.

Written by: Patrick Nally, Industrial Designer, Beyond Design, Inc.