Elite Mold & Engineering, a full-service injection molding and tooling company in Michigan, faces familiar challenges in the plastics industry, including increasing customer demands, rising costs, a severe shortage of skilled toolmakers, and intense competition from overseas tool builders.
To help overcome these hurdles, Elite Mold invested in Mantle’s automated toolmaking system to produce precision mold inserts. This strategic investment allows Elite Mold to rapidly manufacture production-ready mold components, significantly reducing lead times, labor hours, and operational costs compared to traditional toolmaking methods that rely heavily on machining and EDM.
By leveraging Mantle’s technology, Elite Mold enhanced its competitive position, allowing faster responses to new tooling requests while significantly increasing its overall toolmaking efficiency. For instance, Elite Mold successfully printed nine intricate mold inserts for a complex set of production tools, reducing the project’s timeline by two weeks and eliminating over 340 hours of EDM and machining.
At the core of Elite Mold & Engineering’s operations is mold tooling, essential for every injection-molded part they produce. Customers are demanding shorter lead times to win their business, while a severe shortage of skilled toolmakers severely limits capacity. Additionally, offshore toolbuilders put extreme pressure on keeping tooling prices low.
Mold tooling poses specific fabrication challenges due to its high tolerance and surface finish requirements, and the difficulty of working with the hard tool steel materials commonly used.
Producing these tools traditionally requires numerous labor-intensive steps and handoffs, high-value machines, and hundreds of highly skilled toolmaker hours.
To address the mounting challenges of modern moldmaking, Elite Mold & Engineering invested in Mantle’s automated toolmaking system. This strategic decision has allowed Elite to not only meet customer demands more efficiently, but also to expand its capabilities and reduce reliance on labor-intensive legacy processes.
Mantle’s technology integrates 3D printing and CNC machining into a single system that produces production-grade H13 and 420 stainless steel tooling with minimal human intervention. By embracing this innovation, Elite has streamlined its tooling process in several critical ways:
Mantle has allowed Elite to virtually eliminate sinker EDM on many tools.
Mantle produce inserts with tooling tolerances and surface finishes, resulting in dramatic lead time reductions.
By reducing hands-on time per tool, Elite expands its internal capacity without increasing headcount.
Elite Mold & Engineering recently used Mantle’s technology to build two production molds for a customer facing urgent timing constraints. The tools required intricate geometry with deep rib features—components that would typically demand extensive sinker EDM work. By leveraging Mantle, Elite delivered fully functional production tooling faster, with fewer labor hours, and without EDM required.
No sinker EDM or electrode machining required
Total labor: 79 hours per mold (170+ hours saved per mold)
Total labor: 250+ hours per mold, 500+ hours across two molds
40 hours
60 hours
80 hours
35 hours
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6 hours
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Conventional Toolmaking:
Mantle Toolmaking:
No sinker EDM or electrode machining required
Total labor savings: 170+ hours saved per mold, 340+ hours saved on the entire project
First molded samples delivered a full week ahead of schedule
340+ hours of CNC and EDM work avoided across two molds
95% of plastic part dimensions within ±0.003” tolerance
No spotting or tuning required at T0 sampling
As one of the first mold shops in Michigan to adopt Mantle’s automated toolmaking system, Elite Mold & Engineering is redefining what’s possible in North American toolmaking. By eliminating sinker EDM on many inserts and reducing the need for CNC programming and electrode machining, Elite has dramatically shortened lead times and cut hundreds of hours of manual labor per project.
The ability to print production-grade H13 tool steel inserts that are 75–95% complete off the printer allows Elite to accelerate delivery, meet aggressive customer timelines, and reduce bottlenecks in the tool room. Mantle’s system has also enabled Elite to boost toolmaker productivity and expand capacity without adding headcount, addressing the industry-wide labor shortage while freeing skilled employees to focus on higher-value work.
These gains in speed, efficiency, and cost structure don’t just solve immediate challenges—they position Elite to compete globally and deliver greater value to customers while keeping high-precision manufacturing rooted in the U.S.
