How Mikrostyk combines laser cutting, CNC, and soft-tooling to reduce costs in metal stamping

Combining laser cutting, CNC, metal bending, and manual soft-tools

In metal fabrication, every project comes with its own requirements. Not all components need costly, multi-stage progressive dies. Some parts — even though they can be stamped in a single operation. Simply have production volumes too low to justify investing in a full progressive tool.

This is where Mikrostyk leverages its advantage: combining laser cutting, CNC, metal bending, and manual soft-tools into a smart, hybrid manufacturing process.

Why doesn’t every project require a progressive tool?

Progressive dies are ideal for high-volume production. Which means hundreds of thousands or even millions of parts. They ensure repeatability, high production speed, and a wide range of operations completed in a single press stroke. However, these tools are expensive to design and build, and their lead time can stretch over many weeks.

For projects where the total number of stamped components does not exceed 100,000 pieces, investing in a full progressive die often doesn’t pay off for the customer. Additional factors such as part size, material, required operations, or tight tolerances can further influence this decision.

That’s why Mikrostyk offers an intermediate solution that delivers quality comparable to metal stamping, but without the heavy upfront investment.

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Hybrid process: laser + CNC + bending + soft-tool

A key element of this strategy is the technological assessment carried out by Mikrostyk’s design engineers. Every project is evaluated to determine whether the component can be:

This approach allows us to carry out multiple stages of metal processing without the need to build a large progressive tool. It increases the number of operations, but significantly reduces the project’s entry cost.

What does the customer gain?

  1. Lower project cost – the unit price may be higher than in a progressive-die process. However  the overall investment is much lower because the customer does not need to finance an expensive tool.

    Faster time-to-market – soft-tooling and laser/CNC programs are created much faster than full progressive dies.

    Design flexibility – this approach allows easy implementation of design changes such as hole adjustments, radius corrections, or undercuts. This flexibility is often crucial in the early stages of product development.

    High-quality execution – thanks to Mikrostyk’s experience in metal stamping and metal bending, components produced through the hybrid method achieve consistently high quality. They meet the requirements of industries such as automotive, HVAC, lighting, and consumer electronics.

Why Mikrostyk?

Mikrostyk is a company with over 60 years of experience in metal stamping and toolmaking. Our extensive toolshop allows us not only to design and build progressive dies, but also to develop dedicated soft-tools for low and medium production volumes.

We offer:

  • a modern park of laser and CNC machines,

  • high-precision press brakes,

  • an in-house toolshop capable of designing soft-tools with short lead times,

  • a team of process engineers, designers, and quality engineers who jointly determine the best production path.