Ford Motor Company is putting some serious Detroit muscle behind a homegrown marine startup, helping move a once-boutique propeller from one-off prototype to real-world production. Working out of Detroit’s Michigan Central innovation campus, Ford engineering teams helped Sharrow Marine retool its signature Sharrow Propeller for a 3D sand-casting process that trims production time from months to roughly two weeks. For a region intent on rebuilding industrial heft, it is a textbook case of big-OEM know-how fueling a local supplier’s scaling push.
In a press release, Sharrow Marine said its engineers and Ford’s Advanced Industrial Technology & Platforms team spent about nine months adapting the complex propeller design to 3D-printed sand molds, slashing casting lead times from about 130 days to roughly two weeks. Dan Michalski, Ford’s additive manufacturing operations supervisor, said in the release that "Ford has been at the leading edge of 3D sand-casting." Sharrow also noted that Ford helped lock in the mold process, while regional foundries are slated to handle the higher-volume pours needed to keep up with demand.
How the casting switch unlocked volume
The production shift replaces a slower investment-casting workflow with 3D-printed sand molds that can be produced, tested, and tweaked far faster while still hitting the tight tolerances the propeller needs. As reported by Crain's Detroit Business, Michigan Central helped broker the connection between Sharrow and Ford, and the automaker then worked alongside regional foundries to validate the new approach. Michigan Central pitches its campus as a place where prototyping labs, manufacturing expertise, and local suppliers can shave months off the journey from prototype to production, according to Michigan Central.
Local footprint, bigger markets
Sharrow has been steadily growing its Metro Detroit footprint. The company opened a roughly 60,000-square-foot Harper Woods plant last year to boost capacity, a move previously covered as a plan to triple production with new facility. Industry reporting says the quicker casting pipeline and a Detroit manufacturing base have put Sharrow into deeper talks with boat builders about OEM fitments, and have sparked interest from other sectors exploring cross-industry uses.
In an exclusive, BoatTEST reported that Sharrow expects capacity to climb toward roughly 2,000 units a month as the new process ramps up. That kind of volume would have been hard to imagine back when each propeller moved through a slow investment-casting queue.
Company leaders say the same casting playbook could extend beyond marine propulsion to drones, industrial pumps, and renewable energy hardware, and that hiring is underway to staff the expanded output, according to Sharrow Marine. For Detroit, the partnership offers another concrete example of how OEM engineering talent and a curated innovation campus can translate into local jobs and fresh supply-chain business for regional foundries and fabricators.
