A bridge tool is often a prototype tool that produces production quality parts. The intent of a bridge tool is to provide a sufficient volume and production rate of molded products while hardend high productivity tools are being produced. This allows products to be brought to market sooner and decisions on when or if to commit to production tooling to be delayed. Both of these factors are incredibly valuable to our customers in markets where product cycles are becoming shorter. In many instances Xcentric’s customers elect to have us produce prototype, bridge, and production tooling to assure a seamless handoff between each phase. At Xcentric, there is little difference between Prototype, Bridge or Production tooling. While other injection molding companies differentiate between mold types, we take an engineering approach to building all of our molds with production as the intent. During the engineering process, each mold is constructed and engineered based on annual volume, production rate, geometry, and complexity. Due to our approach to the mold building process, we typically are able to achieve cost reductions beneficial to our customers. This is also attractive to customers who want to use their mold for a prototype and later decide they want to use it for bridge production or even high volume production.