The Customer: Kabuki Strength
Kabuki Strength is a training facility and manufacturing company out of the Pacific Northwest. Driven by a desire to innovate and push the boundaries of health, strength, and performance, Kabuki’s business encompasses 4 main pillars. They design, engineer, and manufacture equipment, offer superior coaching services, enrich minds with research-backed education and give back to their community via philanthropic work.
Kabuki Strength came to RapidMade during the product development phase of their Kratos Flywheel training device. They needed to create load-bearing weight pans, high-stress components integral to the functionality of the machine, that would see repetitive force from the replacement and removal of the weights during regular use of the equipment.
The Challenge
Kabuki Strength was looking for an American-made solution that could deliver industrial-strength, high-quality parts. They were also seeking a fast turnaround and low order minimum to accommodate ramp-up time during the Krato’s launch.
The Solution: Durable Thermoformed Plastic
Ideal for custom trays, panels, packaging, and housings, thermoforming is a molding technique that heats plastic sheets until they reach a pliable forming temperature. The sheet is placed into a mold where the shape is manipulated and excess air is siphoned from it to create a consistent definition. Once cooled, the product is removed from the mold and residual plastic is trimmed and recycled.
In addition to the wide selection of available materials, thermoformed products were ideal for parts of the Kratos Flywheel, including the weight pan, because of their ability to satisfy a host of aesthetic and mechanical demands. In the end, 3/16” ABS made the most choice for this application because the stiffness and strength would work well to handle the load and force while the heavy hair cell texture provides the scratch resistance that these weight pans would need.
Faster and more cost-effective than injection molding for these low volumes (typical orders of 50 - 100 units,) the parts could be made in a fraction of the time and for massive savings on tooling.
Why RapidMade?
In today’s fast-paced, on-demand landscape, RapidMade is able to meet accelerated timelines at a fraction of the cost of traditional manufacturing. From our innovative technology to our experienced engineers, we can help businesses like Kabuki Strength create customized, American-made parts while enjoying valuable cost savings. We can also cater to small-batch, lower quantity runs to help decrease costs associated with producing and storing excess inventory.
Check out the final product made for Kabuki Strength:
Interested in learning more about our engineering, product design and custom manufacturing services? Contact us today!