Another Milestone: Custom Tooling.

We’re excited to announce another milestone for HPT: our custom-designed milling tools have finally arrived, and they’re performing better than we hoped! After months of planning and refining, we now have four specialized profiling tools, each crafted to mill their respective profiles of the panels in our GRID panel system. These tools are an essential part of our production process, allowing us to achieve our precise profile shapes. With this milestone, we’re not only ensuring accuracy and consistency but also creating a foundation for faster, more streamlined manufacturing.

What’s particularly exciting is how these custom tools have cut down our milling time. Previous milling methods using traditional tooling would take us around 10 minutes to complete the panel profiles, which was far too slow for large-scale production. Now, thanks to these dedicated tools, we’ve managed to bring that time down to an estimated 3 minutes per panel—a remarkable improvement. And as we continue fine-tuning, we’re optimistic that we’ll be able to shave even more time off, making our process even more efficient.

These tools are designed to work seamlessly with the Onsrud 5-axis CNC mill at the Autodesk Technology Center, which provides the precision and flexibility we need to bring our panel designs to life. Seeing the tools and mill working in harmony is incredibly rewarding and validates the effort we put into designing these custom solutions. This milestone brings us significantly closer to our production goals. Thanks to everyone here at Autodesk for their tooling recommendations and for allowing us to test our unorthodox tooling profiles!