The benefits for mold manufacturers who use digital manufacturing are plenty, but to name a few: uninterrupted production, the ability to validate geometry prior to incurring costs from wasted materials, the capability to recreate geometries of end of life products if the inventory is eliminated; and, of course, the reduction in cost over machining to recreate tools.

Mold manufacturers see a benefit during the build process due to the use of jigs and fixtures. With digital manufacturing, the toolmaker can create plastic fixtures for use as drill guides and to locate slide actions.

The benefit to mold design is the ability to use digital manufacturing to create a plastic mold and validate the tool before sending it to mass production. For example, you can inject wax into the plastic core and cavity through a process called office low pressure injection molding (OPIM) to test the mold design.

Digital manufacturing is a value-add for a mold shop whether in-house or out-sourced because it helps improve time-to-market, reduce risk and lower costs.

By using digital manufacturing, you can obtain customer approval prior to machining the tool or you can create a high-tech plastic solution, like a slide action, in lieu of a machine part.
Mold manufacturers can offer this technology to their customers as a value-added service or as a consultancy. It provides them a shorter time-to-market.