Capabilities
Mold & Tooling Design
Fudakin designs molds and cuts them in-house, on the same Shenzhen floor — so a design fix becomes a re-cut.
Ask by Emailor copy tiger@fudakint.comWhy tooling that leaves the building costs a customer time
A common setup at other contract manufacturers: mold design is handled by one shop, mold making by another, and the customer's own team ends up as the go-between when a change is needed. Every one of those handoffs is a place a revision can wait days for a quote, a schedule slot, or simply for someone on the other end to reply. None of that is a technical problem — it's an organizational one, and it's the kind of delay a first-time buyer doesn't expect until they're living it.
What in-house actually changes
Our mold and tooling design and mold making run on the same Shenzhen floor as the presses that run the tool afterward. The designer who lays out the gate, the cooling channels, and the parting line is working alongside — often is the same team as — the toolmaker who cuts it, and the DFM engineer who flagged the part detail that drove the design decision in the first place. A revision doesn't leave the building; it moves down the hall.
Where this matters most
First-article tooling almost always needs a round of adjustment — a rib that needs more draft, a gate position that leaves a witness mark somewhere visible, a cooling channel that's creating a warp. That's normal, and it's exactly the moment where a split design-and-build setup costs the most time. In-house, that adjustment is scoped, cut, and back on the press without a second company's schedule in the way.
How it connects to DFM
Mold design doesn't start from a blank part file — it starts from the DFM review that happens before tooling is cut, where wall thickness, draft, gate location, and parting-line decisions get made together rather than the mold designer working around choices already locked in. See our DFM and product engineering page for how that review runs.
Cost and ownership
What a mold actually costs, what drives the number up, and what a customer owns once it's paid for is covered honestly on our tooling and minimums page — the gate to production is tooling cost, not a unit-count minimum, and we don't publish a number here we wouldn't stand behind on a call.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Why does it matter that mold design and mold making happen in the same building?
Because a mold rarely gets it exactly right the first time — a gate needs to move, a rib needs more draft, a cooling channel needs rerouting. When the designer and the toolmaker are the same team on the same floor, that revision is a conversation and a re-cut, not a file shipped to a separate design vendor, approved, shipped again to a separate mold shop, and re-quoted. Every step that leaves the building adds time and a chance for the fix to get lost in translation.
Who designs the tooling — Fudakin, or a third-party design house?
Fudakin designs and cuts mold and tooling in-house. The same team that reviews a part for manufacturability also designs the mold that produces it, which is what lets a DFM finding turn directly into a tooling decision instead of a note that has to be relayed to an outside vendor.
Who owns the mold once it's paid for?
Tooling cost, ownership, and what drives the number up or down is covered in full on our tooling and minimums page — that's the honest answer on cost and ownership, and this page focuses on how the mold gets designed and built.
Does in-house tooling mean revisions are faster?
Yes, and it's the main reason to care about this at all. A revision to a mold already on our floor doesn't wait on a second vendor's schedule, a second shipping leg, or a second round of approvals across two companies — it's a change made by the team that built the tool in the first place.
Does this apply to tooling for Thailand production too?
Mold and tooling design and cutting happen on our Shenzhen floor. Our Bangkok, Thailand facility runs injection molding, warehousing, and assembly — tooling built in Shenzhen can run in either location depending on the program.
Talk to us about tooling
Send us the drawing — we'll tell you honestly what the tooling looks like and what it costs.