Rapid Tooling

Rapid Tooling (RT) is an offshoot of Rapid Manufacturing (RM), which itself is the next stage of Rapid Prototyping (RP). RP offers tremendous flexibility in the design stage, and can satisfy the demand for parts by making tools, which can be used for mass production of the demanded parts. The role of RT starts here by the fabrication of such tools.

In the manufacture of tools, RT has found great success in some industries but many have found its application to be limited. As advances in machined tooling have driven out cost and time, RT’s advantages have lessened, and its limitations remain unchanged.
The most often used technologies for RT allow the production of tooling inserts in metal. However, secondary operations are also required to deliver the required accuracy and surface finish demanded of a tool.

When added to the process, RT often offers only a slight time and cost advantage over machined tooling.

With increasing innovation and research, RT holds promise as a solution that greatly reduces cycle time in the manufacturing process. Since RT is insensitive to complexity, it can produce tooling that offers nonlinear cooling channels.
Conformal cooling follows a convoluted path to efficiently remove heat from the tool.
In doing so, molding cycle times are greatly reduced.

With the passing of time, removal of the limitations of RT, improvements in RP and RM, and declining cost-time ratio, the future of RT seems bright.