Which Industries Need a Small Machine and Injection Mold Shop

Buyers often look for a shop that specializes in their own industry. A medical team wants a medical shop, and an automotive supplier wants someone who knows automotive. For short runs and difficult parts I think that is the wrong first filter. The hard problems live in the parts: a thin wall, a hard material, a feature a cutter cannot reach. Those turn up in every industry.

So here is the record. The Uxbridge shop has run since 1992, as Colpitts Design until Invent Art took over its operations in September 2026. Between 2020 and 2025 the shop, then Colpitts Design, made parts for the sectors below.

Who the shop made parts for

• Defence electronics: machined and finished parts for rugged electronics
• Medical equipment: machined and modified parts for medical equipment, including castings and weldments
• Medical and scientific research: parts, mounts and test pieces for medical and scientific research instruments
• Automotive: molded and machined parts for automotive suppliers
• Electronics manufacturing and telecom: molded and machined parts and fixtures for electronics manufacturers
• Plastics molders and other manufacturers: molds, short runs and repairs for other manufacturers, including plastics molders
• Consumer products and startups: molds and first production runs for consumer products
• Promotional and retail: displays and molded parts for promotional and retail programs
• Universities: rigs and fixtures for university research
• Education and experiential: classroom tools for our sister company

In-house

• CNC milling and turning
• Sinker EDM
• Surface grinding
• Welding
• Laser cutting and engraving of non-metal materials
• Woodworking
• Vacuum forming and 3D printing
• Aluminum and P20 steel mold design and build. We can make steel molds, and we'll tell you if one of our partner shops is better suited.
• Injection molding on 60-ton and 150-ton presses
• Mold repair and modification
• Reverse engineering
• Embedded electronics and firmware
• Fixtures, jigs and rigs
• Assembly and kitting

Through partner shops

• Fiber laser and waterjet for heavy sheet metal
• Wire EDM
• Pipe bending
• Electronic soldering and manufacture, when a job needs it
• Specialist grinding and lapping
• PCB and circuit design
• 3D scanning

Also in the shop's record

• Molding runs from tens of parts to tens of thousands
• Broken tap removal
• Modifying castings, weldments and bought-in parts
• Soldering on machined parts
• Design and fabrication of instruments, from proof of concept on
• Resin testing

Before September 2026

Before it took over the shop, Invent Art worked as a design and fabrication studio. Its own site lists CAD design and visualization, CNC laser, routing and milling, injection mold design with aluminum tooling and prototype runs, electronics, robotics and coding, and 3D printing.

Where range stops helping

Range has a cost, and it is fair to say so. A shop that makes one kind of part for one industry all day will know that part, and that industry's habits, better than we do. If your work needs that depth more than it needs range, that shop is the better call.

If your industry is missing from the list, the part is what matters. Send the drawing with a line on what the part does.

Related services: Aluminum tooling, molding and machined parts Product realization and prototyping Shop capabilities