Rapid tooling is the group of techniques used to fabricate tooling fast, at low cost, and efficiently for traditional manufacturing processes to create parts on a slim timeline or in lower quantities.
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Conventional tooling is most commonly produced out of durable metals using technologies such as machining and metal casting. However, these processes are expensive and better suited for large-scale production cycles. When used for tooling iterations or to produce tooling that would be used to manufacture only small batches of parts, costs rise and production timelines extend dramatically.
Incorporating rapid tooling into the product development process enables manufacturers to validate design and material choices prior to transitioning to mass production to accelerate product development, iterate quickly, and bring better products to market. Rapid tooling empowers engineers to use the actual production-grade materials to evaluate how the parts will perform in real-world applications and produce limited volumes of products for beta and validation testing. Rapid tooling can also help troubleshoot the manufacturing process before investing in expensive production tooling.
Alternatively, rapid tooling also provides means to produce custom or limited series of end-use parts using traditional manufacturing processes that would be prohibitively expensive using conventional tooling. This allows manufacturers to test the market for new products, offer a wider range of products, or customize parts based on customer needs.
In conventional tooling method, multiple manufacturing processes and techniques might be involved in product development cycle. This may increase the time spending on each step and extend the time from design turning into a real product. Rapid Tooling involves fewer steps than conventional tooling method. Rapid Tooling enables speeding up the whole process. The faster you can get through the prototyping and molding process, the sooner you can finalize your design and get it into the customers hand.
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The longer time spending on product development cycle, the greater the cost will be. The Rapid Tooling advantage of speed could save your business money over time.
Rapid Tooling allows you to use the actual production grades of material. You can use Rapid Tooling to fabricate custom mold quickly. You can then produce as many prototypes from this mold as you can, creating parts with different material grades and test on their properties. This will allow you to have a clearer picture on which material grade performs best in real world application and allow you to make the correct material selection before launching the new product in the market.
Rapid Tooling allows the mold to be fabricated in a short timeframe. Hence, this provides more freedom to test out the new ideas and make design adjustments. The parts can be mechanical tested such as impact and stress testing to explore the design flaws before production. This will massively prevent a lot of issues arisen during the future high volume production stage.
Rapid Tooling can also be used to test the process parameter during production stage. For example, different injection speed and mold temperature for injection molding process will affect the part quality. In this way, the engineers and designers could have more measure control on the final part.
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