Design. Validate. Scale. is a five-part fireside chat series from Hawk Ridge Systems and A3D Manufacturing on how a product moves from concept to production. In Episode 1, Design for Manufacturing Success, host David Whitten, account manager at Hawk Ridge Systems, sits down with Jon Toews, SVP of A3D Manufacturing, and Michael Dymond, product manager at A3D Manufacturing, to talk about the design decisions that determine how a part gets made — starting with the one question most teams ask too late.
When a Hawk Ridge customer sits down with A3D on a new part, the instinct is to lead with performance: materials, loads, the tenths on the print. Dymond says that is not where he starts.
“Counterintuitively, that is not my first question. The first question when we’re doing a project deep dive is how many you need.”
Ten or twenty of a high-performance aerospace or DoD part get designed around CNC or a higher-fidelity print. Tens or hundreds of thousands of a consumer part get designed around a different process entirely. Quantity picks the method. The method picks the DFM encyclopedia you are allowed to use. If you skip that, you do not have a design problem yet. You have a lock-in problem.
Why This Is a Design Conversation Now
Toews’s landscape pitch is familiar to anyone shipping hardware in 2026, and it is why “how many” is not a purchasing question. Development cycles are shorter. Time to market still has to leave the company profitable. Supply chain — nearshore, farshore, domestic — matters more than it did half a decade ago. And additive, he says, is no longer a prototyping sidebar.
“Additive is not a prototyping tool anymore. It is a full-blown production tool if that’s what the right fit is for it.”
Additive can make end-use parts, but it is not always the right process for the job. CNC machining still makes the vast majority of accurate metal parts, in Toews’s view, and he does not see that changing soon. The expensive mistake is treating DFM as a single encyclopedia before you know which process you are actually going to run.
Don’t Bake in a Process Your Demand Can’t Support
Dymond has watched teams get deep into a flagship, run one last prototype before tooling, and only then learn why that feature should never have been designed that way. CNC and injection molding do not share a rulebook. Some features are impossible in one and merely expensive in the other. Quantity defines method. Method defines which DFM you bake in. Bake it in wrong and you are not iterating.
Guessing demand makes it worse. Lean your DFM into die casting because you are sure the volumes will come, then find out the real order is a CNC quantity:
“CNC machinists hate to CNC machine and do programming for a drafted die-cast part and all the surfacing and everything that’s involved there.”
That is the tax. You did not just pick the wrong process. You handed a machinist a part that was designed to be a different part.
Additive as a Hedge, Not a Toy
If the run rate is unknown, Toews’s advice is not “print forever.” It is: do not buy the tool to find out whether the market exists.
“You don’t want to go commit to an injection mold that might cost you thirty thousand dollars. So it allows you to actually go to market with additive.”
You can stay on additive through the production lifecycle until the demand is real, then move to injection molding — or take a middle step in cast urethane. That is a hedge for a lean team seeding a market, not a claim that printing always beats tooling.
It also cuts the other direction. Dymond: if you design the part for injection molding, nine times out of ten it is a 3D-printing-friendly part. The reverse is not implied. So an IM-aware first release can ship on a printer, take the beating from a loud 2026 customer base, and move to tooling without starting over.
“It’s 2026. We have customer bases that are loud and will let their feedback be known if your initial release of your product line isn’t fitting the bill.”
Field the feedback. Send a new file to the printer. That agility, he says, has real value — as long as you did not lock yourself to a process that cannot take the revision.
Hybrid Is a Strategy, Not a Technology
Hawk Ridge and A3D use “hybrid manufacturing” in a specific way, and Toews wants it un-confused from the ten other definitions in the room.
“First of all, it’s a strategy. It’s not a technology.”
Look at where the product sits in its lifecycle. Pick the right process for that part at that moment. Look at the whole assembly, not one hero component. One part might stay on additive because it will iterate; another metal part in the same BOM might be CNC because that is still how you get the accuracy.
The opposite of that strategy is a shop that says, “Whatever you want, we’ll make it.” Customers overspend. Parts sit on a shelf. A3D’s consultative approach means you get the outcome you wanted.
Watch Episode 1
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