Custom Overmolded Cables in Weeks, Not Months

How do you get custom overmolded cables in weeks instead of months? In this episode of the CTRL+Listen podcast — brought to you by Octopart — host James sits down with Sacha Fabien, co-founder of Fillio, a Quebec-based low-pressure overmolding and cable assembly shop that's modernizing a slow, old-school process. Sacha shares how a hunt for a low-profile M8 connector led him to develop overmolding in-house, why overmolding is the overlooked step behind nearly every cable you own, and how Fillio uses 3D-printed molds to cut tooling cost and iterate fast.

They dig into the real challenges of overmolding and cable assembly — the cost of entry, lead times, and the teaching involved for engineers new to the process — plus how Fillio pulls live availability, pricing, and lead-time data through the Octopart API to quote faster. Sacha and James also cover the bigger picture: how COVID and tariffs are pushing hardware teams to reshore and build local supplier resilience, where robotics and physical AI fit into manufacturing, and why a reliable local supplier has gone from a hard sell to something buyers actively want. If you build hardware, source components, or care about supply chain resilience, this one's for you.

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Resources from this Episode

• Fillio site (newsletter signup at bottom of page): https://www.fillio.ca
• Contact Fillio: info@fillio.ca
• Octopart API — how Fillio sources part data: https://octopart.com/
• Sacha's LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sacha-fabien-141b9283/en?originalSubdomain=ca
• Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fillio1/

Transcript

Intro: 

We need to bring down the overhead of quoting, of everything in between. AI usually isn't the go-to for these things, but it can help you build the tools you'll need to bring down this overhead. And with physical AI right around the corner, I think there are going to be a lot more opportunities on the manufacturing side of things too.

James Sweetlove (JS): Hi everyone, this is James from the CTRL+Listen podcast, brought to you by Octopart. I have a special guest for you today — this is Sacha Fabien, CEO and co-founder of Fillio. Thank you so much for coming on the show, great to have you.

Sacha Fabien (SF): Oh, thanks for having me.

JS: Anytime. Do you want to start by telling us a little bit about your story, your background, and the company's story?

SF: Yeah, sure. My background is in mechanical engineering, and here at Fillio we offer overmolding and cable assembly. My journey into this world started at my first job, here at a local robotics company. There we were designing end-of-arm tooling for cobots, and we needed an M8 connector with the lowest profile possible. We searched everywhere and couldn't find anything, so we ended up developing low-pressure overmolding in-house just to make our own connector. Then, fast forward to 2022, a contact of mine reached out — his overmolding suppliers overseas couldn't deliver anymore because of COVID. So I started typing this long message where I was explaining how hard it was to find a local overmolding supplier, and halfway through I stopped and realized there was something to be done there. I knew the process, and nobody was offering it. So that same year I bought my first machine and started offering it to companies I knew that had that pain. And by 2025, last year, the demand was real, so I went all in and built a team around it. That's how Fillio was born — low-pressure overmolding and cable assembly here in Quebec. Really, the mission behind all of it is to accelerate our customers' innovation. If a hardware team can get custom overmolded cables in weeks instead of months, they can iterate faster, their products get to market faster, and their products get to market looking like a finished product, not just a prototype. So that's really what drives us.

JS: That's fantastic. Maybe we'll take a step back — can you tell us a little bit about why overmolding and harness assembly are so important in modern electronics?

SF: Well, overmolding is kind of overlooked, because we see it every day but we never think about it. Every cable next to you has an overmolded end, usually both. But we don't really do it much in North America, because it's usually only for high-volume products like USB cables and so on. When you need something really special, you have to find a local supplier for that. Overmolding gives you mechanical properties that other approaches — like potting or conformal coating. If you need through-holes, you won't get that with those.

JS: And how have you seen this technology, this space, evolve in recent years?

SF: It hasn't that much. Overmolding is a pretty old process, and the suppliers are usually pretty old-school. You contact them, you get a reply within a week or two, and then they tell you that you don't have the volume for it. So this is what we're trying to do here at Fillio — modernize this process. We're trying to make a service that people are going to like, and bring down the cost of entry to this process.

JS: That's great. So you're basically trying to make it more scalable and more accessible for people?

SF: Yeah. The problem with overmolding is usually the cost of entry. The tooling is pretty steep, and we're trying to bring that down as much as possible — and bring down the overhead of the design of the mold and the design of the part as much as possible.

JS: Makes total sense. What are the primary challenges that you've seen from your side of things, in design and production?

SF: One of the challenges is that engineers over here aren't used to the process of overmolding, so there's a bit of teaching involved — what works, what doesn't, whether you need two-shot overmolding or one-shot overmolding. And on the cable assembly side, I'd say the main thing is getting to know the lead time and the cost of every specific part that the customer needs in their design. So there are two challenges that are different, but both come down to the cost of entry. If you need three people to look at the BOM, source the parts, and get the lead time just to tell your customer what the lead time will be, then you have to price your parts — and if there's a markup, you have to price the parts accordingly. So yeah, those are both.

JS: And where do you get your part data, your availability data, generally speaking?

SF: Well, we get it through the Octopart API. We built ourselves custom software that pulls down the availability, the price, and the lead time of the part. The Octopart API is pretty useful because you can get different distributors for the same part and know instantly which one has the lowest price and which one has availability. And we also get distributors that we didn't know about, and they're ranked too. So yeah, that's pretty helpful.

JS: Congrats — being so useful to you, that's fantastic. What would you say is the importance of prototyping, and accessing prototypes with speed and reliability, in this area?

SF: I think it's pretty much the biggest concern for our customers, because they want to iterate faster. Usually the development time is pretty short in different industries — you need to develop your product from the ground up in six months or a year, and for that you need to iterate faster. The lead time of your suppliers is usually the biggest concern when you're developing a hardware prototype. So here at Fillio we really try to make that lead time for prototyping as short as possible. And afterwards we can get lead times that are more usual for when you're out in production — you know what quantity you'll need during a year, so it's easier to plan accordingly.

JS: Right, that makes sense. And then something I've seen often that interacts with or affects prototyping speed and efficiency is additive manufacturing, or 3D printing. Do you see a lot of impact in that area on the prototyping side of things?

SF: I do, I do. Here at Fillio we use it — we have our own 3D printers in-house. To start with overmolding, we use 3D-printed molds. So when I say you can iterate faster, you can also iterate with a small cost. We can make a mold pretty fast, and if the design changes for some reason after testing, we can make a new mold — we don't have to rework the mold. That costs a lot when you're doing molds in steel or aluminum, but if you only have to 3D-print a new mold, you can iterate a lot faster. We also do a lot of jigs for cable assembly — for length, for placing cables during assembly. There are a lot of jigs involved, and we can do good poka-yoke with it too. So yeah.

JS: That's great. Have you seen much of an impact in this area from AI as well? I know AI is affecting everything in every area, but have you personally seen much of an impact from AI in your space?

SF: I have. I don't think a lot of suppliers in the manufacturing world have really adopted it, but here at Fillio we try to adopt it as much as possible, because it brings a lot of opportunities. As I said, we need to bring down the overhead of quoting, of everything in between. AI usually isn't the go-to for these things, but it can help you build the tools you'll need to bring down this overhead. And with physical AI right around the corner, I think there are going to be a lot more opportunities on the manufacturing side of things.

JS: Definitely. Yeah, I've seen it — everyone I've spoken to, at least in the last six months, has found some way to improve their efficiency using it. Obviously every business is different and the use cases are different, but I feel like anyone who hasn't adopted it in some way at this point is kind of losing ground by not doing so.

SF: Definitely.

JS: So I want to take a step back from the company and talk about some industry-wide or regional topics. I was wondering, from a Canadian perspective, what impact have you seen from reshoring initiatives in Canada specifically?

SF: Yeah. Well, as I said, COVID — and the tariffs now — haven't reshored the products, but I think the buyers, our customers, are trying to have a plan B in case their offshore suppliers can't deliver anymore. They haven't reshored everything, but I think they're trying to build up their suppliers just in case for that scenario. And sometimes they split the volumes between two suppliers, where usually they would just go all in with one offshore. So that's pretty much the biggest thing I've seen with the latest political landscape.

JS: Okay, that makes total sense. What about in the robotics space? Have you seen much movement in robotics in Canada in recent years?

SF: Well, in Canada it's kind of funny, because we have a lot of robotics OEMs, but so far we haven't adopted the technology that much. I think we have to, otherwise we won't be competitive with offshore suppliers — in every industry, but ours has a lot in cable assembly. I think robotics hasn't been a go-to yet; it's pretty manual still, because where robotics fails is usually when there are clustered parts or flexible parts involved, and that pretty much sums up cable assembly. But as I said, with physical AI, I think there are going to be a lot of opportunities to bring robots into the workspace.

JS: For sure, I can see that happening. What about from the supply chain side of things? What have you seen change-wise in recent years? Obviously since COVID, regional conflicts, tariffs — has this disruption affected you in your area as much as some of the others in the tech space?

SF: It has, it has. In 2022, when I started pitching the idea of Fillio, people were skeptical. But right now people really want to have a local supplier they can rely upon if something fails. That's really the mindset that has changed with COVID and the tariffs. Otherwise, I think there's still the issue with volume, since we haven't adopted robotics as much. People are skeptical when it comes to really high volumes, but we're trying to show them that we can do high volumes here in Canada.

JS: That's great. And then for anyone listening who wants to get in touch with you to learn more or discuss services, what's the best way for them to do that?

SF: Yeah, sure. We have a website that I'm sure is going to be next to the podcast somewhere — it's fillio.ca. And if you want to reach out directly, you can send us an email at info@fillio.ca. That's really the best way — someone's going to respond pretty quickly to your inquiry.

JS: Great. And if someone wants to just keep up with updates, is LinkedIn the best place to follow along?

SF: Yeah, there's LinkedIn. We also have a newsletter that comes out every month or two, and you can subscribe — we're going to have a link on the website to subscribe to our newsletter.

JS: Great, and we'll include the links to your LinkedIn, your website, and everything in the description of the video, so if anyone's interested they can find that information there easily. Sacha, thank you so much. It's been great speaking with you, and it sounds like you're in a great position for the future — I think there's going to be a lot more demand coming up for you.

SF: Well, thanks, and thank you for having me. It was really nice to be on the show.

JS: Thank you to everyone listening. Thanks for tuning in — come back next time, we'll have another guest.