0
1.1kviews
Rapid - Tooling
1 Answer
0
10views

Rapid Tooling is the result of the unison of Rapid Prototyping techniques with conventional tooling practices in order to produce a mold quickly. This process, as well, is used to prepare parts of a functional model from CAD data in less time and at a lower cost. The cost is low in comparison to the traditional machining methods. To be precise, Rapid Tooling can serve as a channel to production injection molded parts.

Either, Rapid Tooling brings to use a Rapid Prototyping model as a pattern, or uses the Rapid Prototyping services directly so as to fabricate a tool for limited quantities of prototypes. As it cannot be denied that expensive tooling cost is fair only if the volume of production is high. Actually the way to produce tooling quicker and in a cost effective manner where small manufacturing quantity is concerned, Rapid Tooling comes as a resort.

enter image description here

There always is a need for some intermediate tooling to produce a small quantity of prototypes or functional tests during the product development cycle. These small volumes are used for marketing samples, evaluation purposes, and as production process design. Thus, Rapid Tooling has become all the more important to manufacturing industry.

There are several advantages of Rapid Tooling, comprising:

  • Tooling time is much shorter than for a conventional tool
  • Tooling cost is much less than for a conventional tool

However, the main challenge that generally is faced in the case of rapid tooling is the tool life. The tool life is less than that of conventional tools and tolerances happen to be wider than that of conventional tools.

Benefits of Rapid Injection Tool Molding

  • Prototypes in production material in little time.
  • Allows for full fit and function testing.
  • Discover any design imperfection on early stage.
  • Low cost tooling allows for facilitate design refinement and modification.
  • Preceding production process- molds can produce thousands of parts.

Benefits of Rapid Tooling For Manufacturing

  • Shorten the Tooling Lead-Time - Normal development time is shortened from months to a few days or weeks.
  • Low Cost - reduced Cost allowing real trials affordable.
  • Allows functional test of parts on initial design stage .
  • Data CAD Direct Transfer - Many imperfections due to drawings misinterpretation can be avoided using the original CAD model all through the RP process and then along to RT process.
  • Due to short tooling manufacture time and low cost in using RT, many engineers prefer to produce parts for functional test in the early design stage. As a result, many design faults are debugged before production, so many design failures are avoided.

Advantages of Rapid Tooling

  • Rapid tooling is the process of building core and cavity inserts as a product of rapid prototyping technology. This process has got a number of merits including
  • The product is brought into the market earlier than the scheduled time
  • People can get the products at a lower price as compared to the price when products are mass produced using injection tools
  • It facilitates the production of various products in a wider range of materials
  • It lowers the time and cost of the product manufacture
  • It Rapid tooling is mainly used for specific small quantity needs including prototyping
  • It may as well be used for troubleshooting existing problems
  • Rapid tooling is being used these days to create molds for commercial operations since the time lag is so short between start to finish.

Moreover, alternate methods require precious time and resources, thus, rapid tooling serves as a quicker way to produce the required products. This allows companies to quickly produce commercial products with the benefits of rapid prototyping.

Rapid Tooling Constraints

The most rapid RP systems are still too slow and are limited as they can't produce parts in a wide range of materials; at a fast enough rate, to perform the enormous range of industry requirements. Despite the vast progress in direct part fabrication, even conventional processes such as molding and casting are still the only means available.

RP is frequently the technological path making these manufacturing processes faster, cheaper and better. Certainly, the tooling fabrication is actually the most important application of direct manufacturing.

The two main ways to make tooling molds using Rapid Prototyping are directly fabricated by an RP system, or indirect or secondary processes RP-generated parts that can be used as patterns for a mold fabricating

Please log in to add an answer.