Wire forms are used in a variety of industries and applications. Their shapes can be either simple or complex—but the difference between the two is the ease of finding a manufacturer that can meet your needs. Virtually all manufacturers are able to create simple wire forms, but not many are up to the task of making complex shapes. Unfortunately, this means that there are limited suppliers of complex wire forms, and it can be tricky for purchasing managers to find one that can make complex wire form designs come to life. Here are five reasons why your manufacturer options are limited.

1. Design Expertise

Designing complex wire forms isn’t as simple as plugging in some numbers into a formula. Many additional factors need to be considered and configurations need to be exact. Designing complex wire shapes takes skill, expertise, and experience. And many suppliers don’t have the expertise needed to ensure accuracy. Without engineers on staff to take charge of the operation, you risk manufacturing a design that ultimately won’t work for your application. Many suppliers won’t take the chance of this happening, so they simply do not offer complex wire forming services.

2. 3D Capabilities

Suppliers with 3D capabilities are just about the only ones that offer complex wire forming services these days. 3D technology has revolutionized the way wires can be formed. The process is quick, efficient, accurate, and best of all, cost effective. The possibilities are virtually endless—no project is too complicated or difficult when you work with a manufacturer with 3D machinery. Unfortunately, not every supplier will have this new state-of-the-art technology, which is why many will only offer you simple wire forming services.

3. Additional Operations

Without 3D technology, complex wire forming means using many different types of machinery to get the exact shapes and angles correct. If a supplier doesn’t have the right machinery on hand, properly manufacturing the wire forms isn’t possible.

4. Limited Precision

Because the design of complex wire forms is more difficult and complicated to get right, there is a lot more room for error. Any slight variation in the specifications can ruin the entire project at the design stage. And, with additional operations comes additional chances for mistakes to occur as well. So many extra steps mean that the precision and accuracy of both the designing stage and the manufacturing stage can be in jeopardy. Most suppliers don’t want to risk the high probability of error and simply do not take on complex wire forming projects as a result.

5. Additional Cost and Time

Without 3D wire forming machinery, creating complex wire shapes can be costly and time consuming. All of the additional operations that need to be performed to do the task, take effort, which leads to higher manufacturing costs that some suppliers cannot bear. Without 3D capabilities, complex wire forming isn’t feasible for many suppliers.

Go with the Pros

Without 3D technology, there is a lot of room for error during the complicated design stage and the additional operations needed for complex wire forms. It’s also more time consuming and expensive due to the extra work that needs to be put into the process. These issues are often too much for suppliers to bear so they choose not to take on wire form projects with too much complexity. If you’re looking to create complex wire shapes, your best bet is to work with a manufacturer that can offer you 3D wire forming technology.