No drawing?
One sample, no drawing, and every factory says no
You have a prototype, a competitor's part, or something you bought online. No 2D drawing. No 3D CAD. Every quote request comes back with the same sentence: send us the drawing first.
A missing drawing isn't a missing product. The part in your hand already contains every dimension anyone needs — it just hasn't been written down in a format a mold shop can work from. That translation is a real service, and it takes about 3 to 4 weeks.
What actually happens during those weeks
- 3D scan plus manual measurement. The scan captures the surface geometry; hand measurement catches the things a scanner reads badly — internal features, sharp edges, critical fits.
- Rebuild into 2D and 3D CAD. Not a scan mesh handed back to you. A real parametric file that a mold designer can open and work from.
- DFM check against the actual processes. Can this be cast? Can it be machined afterward? Draft angle, wall thickness, and gate location get evaluated before anyone quotes tooling.
- Straight into tooling. Because the file was built against real casting and machining constraints, it doesn't need a second round of redesign before steel gets cut.
Why "we'll scan it for you" usually isn't enough
Plenty of shops will scan a part and email you a file. Then you're back where you started — holding a file, chasing a mold shop, a foundry, a machine shop, and a finisher separately, and hoping the file works for all four.
Every file rebuilt here is drawn around what we can actually cast and machine. What gets drawn is what gets made, because the person drawing it knows which mold shop is going to build the tool.
📷 實拍：3D 掃描設備正在掃一個鋁件，或掃描結果對照實物的畫面。
What to send
The physical sample is ideal. Photos with a ruler in frame are enough for a first conversation about whether it's worth going further. If your part has internal geometry that matters, say so early — that's usually the thing that decides whether scanning alone is sufficient.
When we'll tell you not to bother
If the original part was designed for a process that doesn't make sense at your volume, reverse-engineering it faithfully just copies someone else's constraints into your tooling budget. In that case the honest answer is that the part needs redesigning, not duplicating — and you'll hear that before you pay for a scan.