A Complex Challenge in mold design
When plastics were first gaining popularity, parts were simple. Most products were designed on a drawing board, so it was natural that the tooling was designed that way as well. […]
What is Direct Methods of Rapid Tooling?
All of the previous methods of rapid tooling involve the indirect production of a master pattern from which the tool is produced. […]
What is Direct AIM tooling?
Rather than making a master stereolithography pattern around which a material is cast, it also is possible to build the cavity directly on the stereolithography machine. […]
What is SLS RapidSteel?
In the same way that a cavity can be generated directly by stereolithography, it also is possible to build tool cavities directly using the laser sintering process. […]
introduction to Copper Polyamide Tooling?
The Copper Polyamide tooling process from First-rate Mold Solution Co. Ltd involves the selective laser sintering of a copper and polyamide powder matrix to form a tool. […]
What is Direct Metal Laser Sintering?
Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) from EOS involves the direct processing of metal powders in a laser sintering machine. […]
What is Laminated Tooling?
Laminated tooling is an alternative to building cavities directly on an RP machine. Using the similar principles to the Laminated Object Manufacturing (LOM) process, layers of sheet metal are cut to replicate slices through a CAD model. Laser cutting or water jet technologies generally produce the profiles. To produce a mold tool, the CAD model [...]
What is LENS?
The Laser Engineered Net Shaping (LENS) system from Optomec (Albuquerque, New Mexico) -originally developed at Sandia National Laboratories – builds parts using a metal powder feed into a laser, […]
What is Controlled Metal Build-up (CMB)?
Albrecht R”ders GmbH & Co KG (Soltau, Germany) has commercialized a process called Controlled Metal Buildup (CMB). […]
What is Reverse Engineering?
Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accomplishes a task with very little (if any) insight into exactly how it does so. Depending on the system under [...]