Speed And Perfection Through Rapid Tooling

The things that we use in our day to day life, that make our living comfortable, machines like vacuum cleaner, washing machine, car etc are all made of many parts assembled together. The parts of these machineries are made by various companies who specialize in this particular job. Now a day’s companies are willing to invest heavily on anything that can get them the latest technology that can help them to make the customers happy by giving them the exact product they desire.

One such technology is rapid tooling. As the name suggests this technology is used for rapidly or quickly producing mold inserts used for injection molding of plastics and metal castings.

The mold cavities that are either directly or indirectly manufactured using Rapid Prototyping techniques are called rapid tooling; it is also the process of transferring non-functional models into functional prototype part through Rapid Prototyping techniques. This is carried out using a casting process.

Difference between RAPID TOOLING and conventional tooling

• Compared to conventional tooling, rapid tooling takes very less time to manufacture the parts.
• The cost factor is  very less in RT
• Conventional tooling has a larger life span
• But the tolerance graph is much higher in RT
• There are two different types of RT methods: direct and indirect tooling.
• Direct tooling is a soft tooling method that uses Rapid prototyping model as tool for molding. On the other hand indirect tooling is a process where Rapid prototyping model is used as a master pattern to create the mold.

The market is a place that changes very rapidly. Hundreds of new models are coming within a span of a few months one such fast changing product is mobile phones. The company needs to keep updating the models as there is heavy competition. In such cases the parts need to be manufactured quicker and it has to be cheaper too. So it is becoming more and more important for manufacturers to introduce the RT system.

Advantages of Rapid Tooling

The manufacturer can get the product into the market before the schedule time. The cost of manufacturing the product is also very less. So in turn the customers get the desired products at much lower price. It may be used for trouble shooting existing problems of the product. RT has no place for errors because it starts with putting a design through CAD (computer Aided Design). More and more companies are taking advantage of RT because of its speed and cost efficient ways to manufacture the products.

In short if a manufacturer wants to stay ahead in the market and wants to reap profits, he surely should introduce RT system in his company as it gives him a clearer picture as to how the product will perform in the real world. It also helps him to make sure that the materials you have chosen are correct. In today’s competitive age where everything is about speed and perfection, rapid tooling is the best choice.