Sharrow Engineering recently announced it is scaling production of its patented Sharrow Propeller through a collaboration with Ford Motor Company’s Advanced Industrial Technology & Platforms (ATP) team. Advanced 3D sand-casting techniques will be utilized, resulting in a significant reduction in production timelines. What used to take as much as 130 days with traditional investment casting will now take place in approximately two weeks, while maintaining the precision required for Sharrow’s designs.
Michigan Central, Detroit’s hub for mobility innovation, facilitated the collaboration between Sharrow and Ford. The two teams worked together to adapt Sharrow’s precision-engineered designs to a 3D-printed sand-casting process, refining and validating the casting process to enable high-volume production to help Sharrow meet growing consumer demand for the Sharrow Propeller.
Ford helped develop and refine the mold manufacturing process while working closely with experienced regional foundries to bring the new casting approach online. By combining Ford’s expertise in advanced manufacturing processes with the deep metallurgical and pouring experience of local foundry partners, the collaboration has accelerated the path toward scalable production of the Sharrow Propeller.
Since its launch in 2020, the Sharrow Propeller has experienced growing demand. The breakthrough design has also attracted interest beyond marine propulsion, with potential applications across mobility, defense, and energy systems. As demand for the technology has expanded, scaling production to meet global interest has become the company’s primary focus.
“Since we introduced the Sharrow Propeller, the market response has been extraordinary, but scaling production has been our biggest challenge, particularly getting high-quality castings fast enough to meet demand,” said Greg Sharrow, Founder and CEO of Sharrow Engineering and Sharrow Marine. “That’s one of the reasons we came to Detroit — to tap into a level of manufacturing capability and ecosystem we couldn’t find anywhere else, including the network at Michigan Central. This collaboration with Ford Motor Company has solved that problem for us in a big way. What used to take an entire boating season to produce can now be made in just a few weeks. That’s game-changing. It’s a powerful example of what can happen when companies like Ford help bring breakthrough technologies to industrial scale.”
For more information, log onto sharrowmarine.com.
