Rapid tooling is a technique that can speed up your time to market by making your product and its parts suitable for testing and design verification during the development phase. It is made possible by many innovative manufacturing techniques, such as injection molding, 3D printing, and CNC machining.
Let’s take a look at how it’s done and its applications.
The process
The practice of using rapid tooling started in the 1990s when engineers began using plastic injection molding to reduce the time it takes to make a mold. The aim was to shorten the prototyping time to a few hours or days instead of several months. The result is a process with one or more techniques to fabricate parts cost-effectively, quickly, efficiently, and in lower quantities.
Injection molding is one of the popular methods for making custom molds and tools. You can use it for low-volume production-grade parts of up to 100,000 pieces from high-quality resins. The process is also considered prototype manufacturing as it generates production-quality components quickly and at a lower cost than full production tooling.
3D printing is another favored rapid tooling method that can produce one or a small number of custom parts. It encompasses many additive manufacturing technologies, such as stereolithography, selective laser sintering, direct metal laser sintering, fused deposition modeling, and multi-jet fusion.
Applications
Rapid prototyping has many applications, which continue to increase as manufacturers introduce new procedures. Use rapid tooling to build custom aluminum or stainless steel molds to manufacture plastic parts or to cast shapes and cores. It can support various manufacturing processes to create rubber, silicone, or plastic parts and metal or composite components.
Some product engineers and designers rely on it to make limited series end-use parts and custom components that would have been too costly to produce with conventional tooling. They also use it for small-scale production runs.
Final thoughts
Incorporating rapid tooling into your product development stage allows you to validate your material choices and design, so you can plan the end-use manufacturing process and ensure its cost-efficiency and speed. To get the most out of it, partner with a reputable service provider that offers a good selection of manufacturing and prototyping methods.
About the Company:
HLH Prototypes Co. Ltd is a company that provides customized, quick prototype and rapid low-volume production solutions. Based in China, our prototyping company offers the efficiency and caliber that your project requires. We offer rapid part manufacturing solutions online across China, through our core services which include sheet metal fabrication, CNC machining, rapid tooling, rapid injection molding, vacuum casting (urethane), FDM 3D printing, SLS 3D printing, and SLA rapid prototyping. For Fortune 500 enterprises, small businesses, and everyone in between, we offer HIGH-QUALITY services. Visit our website for more information.
Over the span of a decade, the Automobile industry has witnessed 3D printing technology transform from a useful alternative to an indispensable tool.
Initially, focused on making prototypes, 3D printing now is responsible for creating complex parts, speeding up tooling cycles, enhancing measurement & testing, while also providing customized solutions.Miniature 3D printed designs of cars are easy to test.
With advances in 3D printing & compatible materials, designers can test various forms & practical functions.
This helps in finalizing optimum design ideas faster, as life size designs of parts & models can be printed immediately upon approval.Rapid tooling is growing at an enormous pace within the industry.
Designing custom tools & 3D printing them saves time, material cost & machine time, making it profitable for automakers in every way.Customization for select vehicle models can be an expensive affair for automakers.
Using 3D printing, customized parts can be easily produced, while lowering cost of customization to OEMs & the end user alike.
Injection Moulding is a manufacturing process for producing parts in large volume.
It is most typically used in mass-production processes where the same part is being created thousands or even millions of times in succession.
Injection Moulding Services File Formats Supported: 2D parts: DWG, PDF / 3D parts: IGES, IGS, STEP, STP, XT.
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Rapid Aluminum Tooling is definitely an easy way to save your time and money because it allows you to make desired changes in the mold according to your preferences.
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