Rapid tooling road to rapid manufacturing

Abstract

Additive Manufacturing (AM) has begun gaining popularity in rapid product development. These machines work with metals, ceramics, polymers and its composites. But polymer is the principal feed material for prototyping. The industry is in the early stage of developing the applications of Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies beyond prototyping by leading it to Rapid Manufacturing (RM) and Direct Manufacturing (DM). Current direct rapid tooling and DM based AM machines are unable to offer the products on economic scales. The indirect Rapid tooling is a promising option in this regard. This work investigates Indirect Rapid Tooling; Indirect Tooling is experimented considering the popular RTV (Room Temperature Vulcanised Rubber) soft tooling method. Stepped bar modelled through AM method in ABS plastic was replicated to a batch of it, in stainless steel employing RTV rubber tooling and investment casting. Dimensional deviations become the critical issue when RTV mold is used which makes the objective for this study. The dimensional deviations in X, Y and Z directions were investigated and reported using Grey Taguchi method of Design of experiment. The work explored the feasibility of Indirect rapid tooling as a road to Rapid manufacturing. This work is a contribution toward realising rapid manufacturing in industrial production through the application of AM and conventional manufacturing.