Product Design & Development Services for Inventors

The Inventor Design & Development Process

How do you turn your Ideas into Reality?

This part of Slingshot's website is dedicated to helping inventors and start-ups through the process of turning ideas into reality.

Specifically, we help you to turn napkin-sketch ideas into professionally designed renderings and, if necessary, through prototyping, manufacturing, licensing, and marketing.

Schedule a brainstorm and we'll help you with the following:

Innovation

First, we identify your target market and explore an exhaustive area of product space around this target. This is an interactive component of Slingshot's process, in which we work with your team to push into new creative space and challenge any assumptions associated with the product category. In this phase, we map and forecast many possibilities, and conclude with recommendations to help you through the decision-making process.

Evolve

Decide

Prototyping

Slingshot's skilled model making and prototyping staff can support you at many stages of the product development process. We can provide anything from simple foam models to sophisticated 'looks-like', 'works-like' functional appearance models.

• Proof of Concept Prototypes
• Functional Bread Board Prototypes
• Aesthetic Appearance Models
• Functional Appearance Models
• Models for Trade Shows
• Models for Focus Groups

Engineering

Slingshot's engineering staff are experts at putting products together. We've developed products to withstand the most grueling environmental conditions, we've created complex mechanisms with several dozen moving parts, and we've optimized products to remove every unnecessary cent from the manufacturing cost.

• Design for Manufacture
• DFMEA
• CAD Modeling (PRO-E and Solidworks)
• Critical Design Reviews
• Cost and Function Optimization
• Engineering Documentation
• Material Selection
• Finite Element Analysis

Manufacturer Relations

We work with qualified manufacturers, yours or ours, that provide estimates of tooling capital and production costs so that you can fully evaluate your project from a return-on- investment standpoint.

Slingshot has worked with dozens of manufacturers globally on programs including injection molded plastics, blow-molded plastics, thermoforming, sheet metal, die casting, extrusion, and dozens of other manufacturing processes and secondary operations. We have found that a thorough and professional "Request for Quote" package makes it easier to engage and qualify manufacturers. We either supply the package to your team or we work directly with contract manufacturers to meet your business needs.

Furthermore, on commodity products produced in China or Asia, Slingshot has developed an approach to development release called "Design for Asia " (DFA). In this method, we take the prototype and design process only up to the point where the engineering direction is clearly set but the final engineering details are executed by an Asian manufacturer. By balancing our design process for these types of programs, we are able to save you significant development costs, while maintaining control of your development program.

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Product Launch Support

Slingshot can support you in many ways as you prepare for launch. We have experience with preparing for FDA audits for medical devices, with preparing material for use in focus groups, and a variety of other product launch tasks.

• Product Testing Support
• Package Design and Development
• Focus Group Support
• FDA Audit Support
• Industry Audit Support
• FDA Documentation