Josef Hecker founded Eifel Pattern & Model in the year 1973. By 1975, Eifel had moved to it’s current address in Fraser, Michigan. Eifel’s experience in the automotive industry began with pattern-making for transmission housings and castings for Chrysler.

We provided mold shops with handmade plastic duplicating aids. These aids were used with a tracer (duplicating) machine. The tracer machine would trace Eifel’s duplicating aid and cut the steel to the aid. The engineering would be completed at Eifel, the plastic injection and die casting would be done elsewhere according to our pattern development. By the early nineties, we were creating patterns for steering wheel armatures. In time, this would open the door for airbags and the other various parts that Eifel manufactures tooling for today. During the mid to late 1980’s Eifel developed patterns and wood models for Hamilton Standard. These patterns involved the propellers and turbo props for the C130 airplane, a small low-flying aircraft.

The late 1980’s and early 1990’s marked a change at Eifel. At that time, we were developing rapid prototype tools using epoxy tooling, quite advanced in those days. In 1989, Eifel purchased it’s first CNC machine—Eifel was on the road to building tools. By 1995, Eifel was no longer creating duplicating aids for other molds shops to build molds, we were cutting tools ourselves. Eifel’s evolution into the full service tooling source that we are today had begun. In no time, we were developing our own CAD data instead of cutting to someone else’s.

In the spring of 1996, we added 10,000 square feet to our manufacturing facility. Through the use of cutting edge technology and dedicated, hard-working people, Eifel today is a full service tooling source that can take your project from the initial design stages to production tooling. We work side by side with our customers performing on-site design reviews and presentations, tooling and tryout support. In December 2002, we achieved ISO 9002 certification just in time to start our thirtieth year.