In-House TPE Prototyping for Hit Hero Using INJEKTO 3
The Challenge
Hero Co. runs two lines of work. Through Hero Labs it develops its own sports focused products, including Hit Hero, a baseball thumb guard brand built to challenge legacy products in the category. It also helps other companies turn business and product ideas into reality through design, sourcing, development, production and strategic advising. The customers change from project to project, but the pattern does not: take a good idea, work out how to innovate on it, and turn it into something people can actually buy and use.
That model depends on iteration, and iteration was the bottleneck. Before INJEKTO 3, prototyping ran on 3D printed mold casts and traditional silicone pouring. Those methods showed shape, but they could not show how an injection molded part would really feel, perform or repeat. Outsourcing closed part of the gap at a cost: quote requests, unexpected charges, inconsistent parts, and shipping time between every revision.
Time and cost both mattered, though flexibility was the bigger issue. For a small company, when every change depends on an outside party, the natural response is to test fewer versions, which means learning more slowly.
The Solution
Hero Co. brought the process in-house with INJEKTO 3, pairing the machine with SLS printed molds to produce small injection molded parts for Hit Hero and to test new product concepts across the business. Instead of judging a design from a render or a cast stand-in, the team evaluates the fit, feel, strength and function of the actual part.
Most of the work runs in thermoplastic elastomers (TPE) at soft shore hardnesses, where small changes in setup show up clearly in the finished part. Mold design and machine setup are handled internally, including temperature and pressure adjustments, so every round of testing feeds straight into the next mold revision. A full cycle, from sending a mold design out to print through molding and testing finished parts, now takes about ten days.
The Results
The clearest gain is control. Rather than sending a design away and waiting to see what comes back, Hero Co. can make a part, test it, identify what needs to change and move directly into the next version. Four external steps were removed from every design cycle: requesting quotes, coordinating small production runs, waiting on shipping, and restarting the whole process whenever a design changed.
That has changed what testing looks like. Hero Co. now produces parts at small scale and puts them in front of dozens of real users for proper feedback, which builds the confidence to scale into mass production instead of guessing at it. Each cycle also keeps product development learning inside the company, which carries value well beyond any single prototype.
