The Manufacturing of Rapid Tooling by Stereo Lithography

Abstract

The development and manufacturing speed of products have become the focus of competition, at the same time the manufacturing not only has to meet user’s constantly changing needs, but also has to have a relatively strong flexibility of manufacturing technologies. Additive processes can be defined as rapid prototyping, which generate parts (prototyping) in a layered way, is gaining progress by rapid tools (RT) and rapid manufacturing (RM) for production of functional parts in small quantity and even one product without adding the cost becomes more and more critical. The paper describes which mechanism of stereo lithography (SLA) rapid prototyping can be applied to rapid tooling for production complex geometries for long-term consistency. Moreover, the paper demonstrates the application examples of rapid tooling fulfilling the required physical, mechanical and geometrical properties in precision deformation and casting process. The most notable advantage is the integration of production design and digital manufacturing within the product development period.