Manufacturing Day 2016!

Today, October 7^th marks the fifth annual Manufacturing Day! This is a day celebrated in North America devoted to 1) promoting how cool manufacturing is, 2) growing awareness for manufacturing as a viable career, and 3) showing what an important role manufacturing plays in our local and national economies. As a growing manufacturing company, we fully endorse what Manufacturing Day is all about!

We are now in our tenth year of operation at Spark R&D. We have worked hard since the beginning to bring as much manufacturing in-house as possible.  Today we: design, 3D scan, 3D print, CNC mill and turn, bend, punch, tumble, anodize, injection mold, print, laser engrave, assemble, test, package, and ship all from our shop in Bozeman, MT.

Bringing our manufacturing in-house has a lot of advantages. First, it allows us an incredible amount of control over the quality of our products and parts. Second, on the research and development side, we can test ideas by efficiently creating prototype parts. This process used to take weeks or even months, and now we can take something from concept to part sometimes in just one day. Lastly, we are able to employ many talented people here in Bozeman. In a time where a lot of companies are shipping jobs overseas, we are proud to be keeping jobs right here!

This teaser video offers a quick look at our manufacturing operations. We’ll be dropping some more manufacturing shorts this Winter showing how we take metal and plastic and turn it into splitboard bindings, so be on the lookout.

Happy Manufacturing Day 2016!  For more information check out www.mfgday.com.  There are nearly 2,500 events going on nationwide ranging from tours of machine shops and semiconductor plants to breweries and distilleries!