Snap-on Tools is a leading global developer, manufacturer and marketer of tool and equipment solutions for professional tool users.  With more than 19,000 products and operations in more than 130 countries, Snap-on has the #1 market share position in their industry and their tools are universally recognized by professionals as the absolute highest quality tools in the industry.

The Snap-on engineering team had traditionally outsourced its design files to a service provider to test and fit new products.  However, this process proved slow and costly.  Due to these pitfalls, Snap-on lost a measure of flexibility in communicating with its sales channels. 

“We needed to make multiple variations more quickly and readily available,” said Steve Wente, technician for Snap-on. “It was considered necessary to be able to model and prototype, fast and inexpensively.”

- Steve Wente, Technician for Snap-on

Snap-on selected the Dimension 3D Printer to verify form and fit of their product designs, and in turn the printer sped-up the product development cycle.  In addition, they no longer have to paint and finish their prototypes, to which they previously exerted time and energy.  They can now focus on new designs, whereas before they had to encode or encrypt their drawings because the design process was not all in-house.