What is Rapid Tooling?
There are different names for it in the industry, such as trial mold, simple mold, rapid soft mold, rapid steel mold, rapid aluminum mold, etc. Its main feature is that the mold production time is short and the cost is low. It is more than 1.5 times faster than conventional mold production. It is a production method that combines rapid prototyping technology with traditional mold manufacturing technology. It is mainly used for the production of small batches of plastic parts. It is an important tool in the product research and development and trial production stages. It provides a cost-effective solution for rapid product iteration, market testing and small-scale production.
Application of rapid mold:
Rapid tooling is mainly used to test and verify components during the prototype development phase of new product development. Rapid tooling can produce product parts or models that can be used for testing at a lower cost and in a shorter time. This type of tooling is usually suitable for trial production of products that are planned to be produced in small quantities but need to be put on the market quickly.
The main features of rapid tooling:
1. Short production cycle: Rapid molds have a short production cycle and can quickly provide trial samples for product testing and evaluation.
2. Low cost: Rapid molds have lower costs in mold material selection and processing and manufacturing than traditional molds, and are suitable for the rapid launch and market testing of new products.
3. Small production quantity: Rapid molds support efficient production of small batches, saving early development investment for new products with low initial production.
4. Verification of mass production: Rapid molds can use actual production materials to make samples, and can test various parameters in the production process to find potential problems and optimize the design, which helps to evaluate the performance of the material and ensure that the product can meet the requirements in actual mass production.
5. Relatively low precision and quality: Rapid molds may have certain limitations in precision and quality due to their short design and manufacturing time.
