Rapid Tooling Additive Manufacturing
3D printing and additive manufacturing is a
main process of rapid tooling. FDM, SLA, SLS and binder jetting are used to
create master patterns for soft tooling and direct tools and mold. As the
market demand increases, 3D printing is becoming popular in producing fixtures
ad tools which significantly speed up the whole production process and lower
the costs. The additive manufacturing technology cost-effectively creates
components layers by layers use polymer or metal. Traditional manufacturing can‘t
create parts with complex geometries but additive manufacturing can do.
With the 3D printing, manufacturers can
test the prototypes and evaluate the quality and performance. 3D printed tools
can be used to produce small bath production run and customized orders. In high
volume mass production, traditional tools like injection molding or CNC
machining will be involved to build industrial-grade tooling after the 3D
printing prototypes molds are tested and verified. This means 3D printing and
additive manufacturing offers the chance to test and optimize the tool design
before manufacturers invest a large amount of money production tooling.
Rapid Tooling Additive Manufacturing has
numerous advantages. When in injection molding production, tooling cost is
usually amortized. The more parts produced by a mold, the lower cost per unit
will be. If using traditional mold making methods to produce prototypes or just
small batch production, the unit cost per part is not competitive. Compared to
traditional tools, rapid tooling has cost advantages. It save around more than
90% compared to using traditional tools which make tooling are accessible for
those manufacturers with limited budget. Using traditional tooling process
usually take several months to complete orders, with rapid tooling, lead times
can be shortened to few weeks or even few days. This fast turnaround time help
to speed up the whole process of production which is allow manufacturers to put
their product to the market faster than other competitors. Rapid tooling
provides chance to improve the mold design until the parts have perfect
properties and functions. Design errors can be adjusted before mass production
which eliminates additional time and cost.
TEAM Rapid has built a long term partnerships with various customers in different industry. If you need help on your Rapid tooling additive manufacturing projects, please contact us at [email protected] for a free quote.