One of the biggest mistakes that companies can make is getting too far down the product design path before involving people with expertise in plating processes and alternatives.
Best practices in Design for Manufacturing call for early consultations with all of the key manufacturing participants to assure that production process choices reflect both the product specifications and the need for optimal production efficiency.
Early involvement of plating experts assures manufacturability and holds down costs – both by minimizing the amount of precious metal in each product and streamlining production sequence to avoid unnecessary steps.
In many cases, making the relatively small investment at the beginning of the design process to choose the optimal reel-to-reel plating methodology can yield huge cost savings over the lifecycle of a product.
