Feasibility study of a new rapid tooling process

The requirements for faster product development cycles, lower product cost and environmental sustainability are ever increasing in today's globally competitive market. Tooling is a very important phase in the product manufacturing cycle. To overcome the shortcomings of long lead-time and high cost associated with conventional tooling processes, new tooling methods with shorter lead-time and lower cost are strongly under demand. In this study, the feasibility of the proposed new rapid tooling process based on back support of a metal shell with packed metal powders is examined. First, the effect of metal powder properties, such as powder shape, size, and size distributions, on powder-packing behaviour is investigated experimentally. Then, the compressive behaviours of the metal shell and the shell-powder assembly are analysed numerically with different compressive loading. The study indicates that the proposed new rapid tooling method can potentially be used for injection moulding applications.