Company Blog

Every great idea, no matter how simple or complex, starts life as a thought. Davies Molding, with their custom molding service, can help you build the plastic parts for your great idea, exactly the way you need them, at every step of the way.

Design

Based on your input, Davies’ engineering staff can help you create the exact look, feel, and dimensions of your ideal plastic part. Utilizing the latest CAD and 3D modelling software, they can easily make changes to be sure the part will meet your specifications. Davies Molding engineers can then lead the design into production by ensuring that high quality molds and tools are created to produce the best possible custom molded part for your needs.

Prototype

Your concept can ‘come to life’ as it is transformed into a 3D image. By specifying colours, materials, drilling, or other operations, you can digitally view the entire part from any perspective. They can even provide rapid prototypes so that real examples of parts can be evaluated before putting tool to steel.

Production

Davies Molding understands that quality and on-time delivery are essential to your business. Both Steadlands and Davies will provide you with a first class service that will stay within your budget. After your product is finished, the service doesn’t stop there. We can ensure that parts can be ordered at any time, at any quantity you choose. We will work with you to ensure that your product is made with the quality and care that is needed for your continued success.

Portfolio

Davies Molding have created thousands of parts, in all different shapes and sizes – no project is too big for them to handle, and with both thermoplastic and thermoset molding techniques, you can get exactly the shape you are looking for.

Previously manufactured bespoke parts include mounts, for surveillance cameras and other video equipment, handles for high end ovens used in hospitals and nursing homes, and drip trays, as used to collect grease in fast food restaurants.

Thermoset or Thermoplastic?

What’s the difference? A thermoplastic is a material that becomes soft and malleable when heated, and goes rigid when cooled. You can repeat this process, heating it, reshaping it, cooling it, a number of times without changing the chemical makeup of the plastic.

Options

Davies Molding offer a wide variety of secondary operations after molding your part, to save you both time and costs of shipping your part to another vendor for these services. These include:

Thermoset: An Alternative to Metal

Thermoset plastics are successfully replacing traditional metal materials, where they provide value through improved performance at a lower cost.

Thermoset plastics are well suited to demanding requirements because they have the capacity to withstand heat and pressure for long periods of time without failure, they are impact resistant, and they have exceptional electrical insulating properties. Their dimensional stability, creep resistance, chemical resistance, stiffness, and high temperature capabilities make them the preferred material where reliable performance in adverse conditions is imperative and can be used as a cost-saving alternative to metals.

Why Davies Molding?

If this hasn’t persuaded you that Davies Molding is the right choice for your custom plastic molding needs, what else can we say to convince you? How about if we point out a couple of extra facts about Davies Molding?

Best Fit Manufacturing – By choosing Davies Molding as your manufacturing partner, you will have one point-of-contact for all the services you need, in just one vendor. Services such as mold design and development, production supervision and quality control can all be handled by Davies, making your project simple and easy to manage.

Risk Mitigation – You will have access to a global operations network, and a well documented, thorough disaster recovery program that minimizes risk from any disruptive factos in producing your product.

IP Protection – Davies Molding maintain a high level of controls throughout the development process to ensure your assets are protected. This has led to them being trusted by all manner of clients over the past 80 years.

Supply Chain Compression – This is, quite simply, the elimination of unnecessary steps in the logistics chain that lead to the manufacture of your product. With Davies handling all of your molding and manufacturing requirements, your quality assurance, inventory maintenance, and shipping costs will be reduced, and your time to market minimized.

Comprehensive Quality Assurance – With end-to-end, single-source responsibility for manufacturing and delivery, Davies’ strict quality auditing throughout the entire molding and manufacturing process, and adherence to REACH, ROHS, and Conflict Materials requirements are all major advantages to make sure your part is produced right the first time.

Force Sensing Resistors were invented in 1977 by Franklin Eventoff, the man who would later, in 1985, go on to found Interlink Electronics, a key global manufacturer of FSRs for whom we are the sole UK distributer.

Force Sensing Resistors, or FSRs as they tend to be known, are constructed of a pair of polymer layers, held a hairsbreadth apart. One layer contains printed electrodes, and the other is covered by a conductive surface, so when pressure is applied to the FSR, the two layers meet, resulting in a variable resistance based on the amount of pressure applied.

In the forty years since they were invented, Force Sensing Resistors have found use in many different industries around the globe, jumping from the food industry, to the medical profession, through to musical instruments, and pretty much everywhere in between. Even in just one of these industries, the use of FSRs is widely different. For example, in the medical profession, Force Sensing Resistors are used to create mats that lie on beds, to allow nurses to know if someone has accidentally slipped off, or even moved. The same FSRs are also used to control prosthetic limbs, and have even been converted into shoes to help teach people how to walk again.

With six different models, the Force Sensing Resistors from Interlink Electronics are available to cover just about any niche you can think of, and their tiny cross section of about half a millimeter means they can be concealed in practically any surface, granting that surface area the ability to control whatever it is you have your FSRs connected to.

Force Sensing Resistors come in several shapes and sizes. With the smallest active surface area being just 5mm across, you can fit the FSR400 into just about any application. There is also available a larger circle, the FSR402. Both types are available with either a long or short tail attached to them which run out to solder tags. Going larger still, you have the FSR406, a square that is perfect for working into an array, and the FSR408, a long strip which can be cut down to size.

I can think of only three products launched in 1977, the Force Sensing Resistor, the Post-It Note, and the movie, Star Wars. It must have been a good year, since all three of these went onto bigger and better things.

May the Force Sensing Resistor be with you!

In the modern day, when the bottom line means everything, and environmental concerns are far from your shareholders’ minds, what possible reasons could there be to use less paper in your office? Will it make a difference?

The answer is ‘Yes’. Not only will a paperless or paper-lite office improve on your green credentials, but you will also start saving money too. Here are a few reasons to consider taking your office paperless, or at least paper-lite.

Legally Defend Yourself

A lot of opposition to electronic signatures is because people don’t know what the legalities are surrounding them. After a lot of personal research into the area, I can tell you that esignatures are legally binding, and can be used in the courtroom. They have not yet been applied to a case in UK law, according to the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting (ICLR, who pay attention to all legal cases in the UK), but their provision in the Electronic Communications Act 2000 means they would have to be accepted. If you would like a copy of this piece of legislation, or indeed the relevant laws regarding electronic signatures from most of the countries around the world, please contact Steadlands.

“To whomever this may concern…”

Letters give your business that personal touch, correspondence from your company to a customer or client. Traditionally, you would write a letter, add your signature to the bottom, and send it on its way. Now, you type out a letter or email, maybe sign it if it is a physical document to be posted to someone, and send it. With an esignature solution, you can do all of that electronically. Simply type out your letter, convert it to a PDF document, then apply your handwritten signature to the electronic document. Then you can send it direct to your customer by email, saving the postage costs, yet keeping that personal touch.

Your Solution, Your Way

While our esignature solutions do have software that allows for signature capture onto PDF documents, or directly into Word or Excel, a key strength of our solutions are the software developers’ kits that are available for use. These will allow an experienced software developer to include esignature capability in your own, in-house software, or even create entirely new applications for you to use. This will let you develop the solutions you need to take your office paper free, without having to worry about restricting yourself to software that might not entirely fill your needs.

Improve Your Green Credentials

Another benefit to converting to a paperless office is that it improves your green credentials. You reduce paper usage, power and fuel consumption, all of which not only saves you money, but is also good for the environment.

Courier Waybills

If you ship goods to your customers, chances are you will use a courier service. When the courier arrives to collect the day’s shipments, he or she will sign a document to say which parcels they have collected. This can be streamlined into a paperless solution, which will mean your office uses less paper, and can save time communicating the properly signed paperwork to head office.

Internal Forms

Timesheets, holiday forms, various logs, and many other different types of form could be used in your business, all of which need a signature before they can be processed, or for security reasons. With an esignature solution, all of this can be done on a computer, meaning no more log books cluttering up your desk, or pieces of paper which could be lost.

External Forms

When you need to get your clients or customers to complete a form, maybe a claims form, or to sign up to a service you offer, you need to capture their signature. Using an esignature capture device, you can now take your paperless office out on the road! All you need is a laptop to connect it to, you will be able to capture any details from your customer, and then their signature, which will allow you to start processing their form immediately, instead of having to wait until your representatives return to the office.

Internal Messages

Sending short and simple messages within an office has traditionally fallen to note paper, or Post-It Notes. If your office is using an esignature solution, or an interactive touchscreen display, then you can literally jot down a note for someone on the pad. This kind of application may require some development work, although there are apps already available for the iPad that utilise Wacom’s Bamboo Fineline Stylus to capture handwritten notes.

Sign off Purchase Orders

In most businesses, some form of authorization is needed before you can place an order with your suppliers. Using an esignature solution for this is another way you could take your office paper free. It would allow your business to save time, by being able to send your purchase order for approval, have it signed and returned to you, within a few minutes, regardless of where it needs to go, or how far it needs to travel. Then, once signed off, you still don’t need to print it, but could send it direct to your suppliers by email, saving you yet more time.

Customer Signing

Anywhere you need to capture customer signatures, an electronic signature solution will be able to save you time and money. Electronically signing forms allow you to get a head start on processing them, since they can be sent immediately to the relevant people or team, instead of having to rely on another delivery system which could take from hours to days to let your processing team get started. This even applies to a simple customer signature capture application. Maybe they have signed for a delivery, or collection, and an esignature solution would allow the signature to be saved and stored digitally, negating the need for paperwork.

Presentations

Sitting across a desk from a potential buyer, you want to be able to impress them with your presentation. With an interactive display, you can place the display in the hands of your buyer, and control the output it shows from your laptop, letting you produce a dynamic presentation to directly target that buyer. You can even make it interactive, for added impact.

Visitor Records

Most large corporations keep a visitor records book, which people use to sign in and out of the building. Turning this into an esignature solution means removing the book from the reception desk – another step in becoming a paper-lite office – but still being able to track guests coming in and out of your building. For fire safety, any app designed to capture a signature for a visitor log could be easily configured to output an electronic file to a mobile device, meaning in case of emergency, you won’t even need to print off a list of people in the building.

Terms & Conditions

How many downloads, or software installs have the Terms & Conditions page?

With the little checkbox at the bottom which you click to say you have read and understood them? And how many companies are there that should do something like that, but in person when directly talking to a customer? Now, with an interactive display, it is entirely possible to do just that. While you are sorting out the contract for your customer to sign, offer them an interactive display and say, “Please have a quick read through our terms and conditions,” then they will be ready to sign when you are, having already studied the details.

Document Storage

Some companies are required to hold onto paperwork for legal reasons, for as much as seven years. For just one or two customers, that is not a problem, but when you start getting into larger numbers, that’s an awful lot of paperwork. Moving to a paperless office means all those documents you need to keep safe can suddenly be stored in something smaller than a shoebox, instead of requiring a warehouse. That is quite a considerable saving. On top of this, it is also a lot safer. You can duplicate documents stored electronically, and so have backups of them in multiple locations. If you have a warehouse filled with your paperwork, one small accident, and it is all gone.

 Audit Trail

With an esignature capture device, you are not only getting the ability to sign electronic documents, but also the ability to interrogate those same documents at a later date. Doing so will show you all the signer details – their name, place of work, date and time of signature capture, and so on. Best of all though, it will also tell you whether the document you are looking at has been tampered with since it was signed. This allows you to tell at a glance if a document is fraudulent, or if it is still valid.

Bonus Advertising

When a customer is sitting at your desk, maybe just discussing something, or maybe actually there to make a purchase, you could use several of our esignature solutions as an additional form of advertising. Both Wacom and ePadLink produce signature pads or interactive displays capable of having images uploaded to them, to be displayed when the pad is not in use. You could use these for directed advertising, linking the images to whatever it is that is being discussed or purchased, or to make your customer aware of other aspects of your business that they may not be aware of. Then, when you need them to, the images disappear long enough for the signature to be captured, then return once the signing process is complete.

You Keep Your Data

There are many services available that offer the ability to digitally sign documents. Most of these require that you store any signature objects, whether they are images, or data collections, on their servers, and that you only access it when you pass a document through the service for signing. With an in-house solution, however, going paperless means you can also keep your own data secure on your own servers. With an esignature capture device, you apply handwritten signatures to electronic documents, which means you don’t store a signature anywhere, except as part of the signed document.

Stock Control

From the stationary cupboard, to hazardous chemical storage, most businesses will have some form of control on their inventory, and will therefore log people making withdrawals from stock. With an esignature solution, you can have a fast and simple process which will remain entirely electronic and secure.

Never run out of ink!

It has happened to all of us. You are trying to write down something important, and your pen stops working. You hunt around for a spare, but they are nowhere to be found. “I’ll have to call you back.” With a paperless office, all your ink is electronic, so you don’t need to worry about ever running out.

Save Time and Money

I hope the other reasons I have provided here show you how much of an impact going paperless, or at least paper-lite, could have on your office, but this is the one that will sell the idea to the people who make the decisions. I’ve mentioned several times how you could save time or money using just one of the examples above, but it is when you take them all together where you can see the savings really add up. Imagine being able to remove all printing and paper costs from your business. What will that alone save? Then you have the knock-on effects, reduced postage costs, since you no longer have to send documents by post or courier, slightly reduced energy consumption, which has the benefit of both bringing down your electricity bill, and making you that little bit greener.

Quite a few of the questions that I have been asked recently during meetings and product demonstrations have been around the legality of electronic signatures.

Electronic signature devices do not only record an image of the signature, this is just a drawing, you can do this on any tablet device and some touchscreen computers.

Electronic signatures carry encryption technology to lock in e-signatures to stop documents being tampered with after they have been signed. Some of the most up to date software will record the speed, pen angle and pressure of the signature which gives a biometric picture of the signature, only using the image as a small part. All E-Signature software that we provide will record the date, time and name of the person signing the document.

Software can also be written easily to go alongside any current systems you may have.

We carry all legislation for most countries around the world, and white-paper documents talking through the legality of an Electronic Signature.

E-Signature devices are inexpensive but they offer a high return on investment, think about how much money you currently spend on paper and storage/shredding of paper.

Imagine they could all be phased out?

How much could this save your company?

Using Electronic Signature devices also support green initiatives, making a difference to the environment is important.

Steadlands have been providing Electronic Signature devices to customers in all markets for over 20 years, if you would like any further advice feel free to contact me: [email protected]

For more information please contact us.

You can also view this article on LinkedIn.