Journal of Materials Processing Technology 106 (2000) 191±198

Rapid tooling: the state of the art

A. Rosochowskia,*, A. Matuszakb
a
Department of Design, Manufacture and Engineering Management, University of Strathclyde,
75 Montrose Street, Glasgow G1 1XJ, UK
b
Institute of Mechanical Engineering and Automation, Technical University of Wroclaw,
ul. Lukasiewicza 3/5, 50-371 Wroclaw, Poland

Abstract

Producing tooling directly from CAD models is regarded as an important method of reducing the cost and time to market for new
products. This paper describes the role of rapid prototyping technology in increasing the speed of tooling development. A comprehensive
review of examples of rapid tooling indicates a major shift in tooling practice. This new trend in manufacturing based on rapid prototyping
and rapid tooling has already had a dramatic impact on the engineering environment. # 2000 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.

Keywords: Manufacturing methods; Rapid prototyping; Rapid tooling

1. Introduction programs are intended to ensure that unsuitable designs are

rejected or modi®ed, in many cases a visual and physical
New market realities require faster product development evaluation of the real component is needed. This often
and reduced time to market. They also demand higher requires prototype tools to be produced.
quality, greater ef®ciencies and cost reductions, and an Creating tooling for prototype and production compo-
ability to meet environmental and recycling objectives. Over nents represents one of the most time consuming and costly
the last 10±15 years this has resulted in a remarkable phases in the development of new products. It is particularly
transformation that can be summarized by the concept of problematic for low-volume products or rapidly changing
world class manufacturing (WCM). The basic theses of high-volume products.
WCM are as follows: (i) total quality, (ii) concurrent engi- To reduce the product development time and reduce the
neering, (iii) short manufacturing lead-times, (iv) ¯exibility cost of manufacturing, the new technology of rapid proto-
to accommodate rapid changes in product volume and model typing (RP) has been developed, which offers the potential
mix and (v) all employees are engaged in continuous product to completely revolutionize the process of manufacture. This
and process improvement. This basic framework is now technology encompasses a group of manufacturing techni-
accepted by all companies aspiring to be world-class man- ques, in which the shape of the physical part is generated by
ufacturers [1]. adding the material layer-by-layer. Many of these techniques
Most objectives of WCM are related to product and are based on either the selective solidi®cation of the liquid or
process development. Product development starts from bonding solid particles. Although RP techniques are still in
the creation of a 3D computer model using a CAD system. their development phase, they are considered a major break-
At that stage the product geometry is de®ned and its through in production engineering [2].
aesthetic and dimensional characteristics are veri®ed. This RP technology allows the production not only of models
product and process development can be supported by and prototypes for visualization purposes, but also of func-
suitable CAE programs. These programs cover a wide range tional parts. This paper describes a new group of RP
of engineering software for predicting product performance applications that covers the production of prototype and
and for the simulation of manufacturing processes without production tooling. These new applications are hereafter
the need to produce physical prototypes. Although CAE referred to as rapid tooling (RT) techniques.
There now follows a brief introduction to RP technology
and the main RP techniques. The bulk of this article is a
*
Corresponding author. Fax: ‡44-41-552-0557 comprehensive review of various RT applications. This will
E-mail address: [email protected] (A. Rosochowski). be concluded with a more general discussion.

0924-0136/00/$ ± see front matter # 2000 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.

PII: S 0 9 2 4 - 0 1 3 6 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 6 1 3 - 0
192 A. Rosochowski, A. Matuszak / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 106 (2000) 191±198

face layer of the resin is cured selectively by the laser beam

following the path de®ned in the slicing model. After this
layer has been created, the movable platform is lowered into
the vat, a new thin layer of liquid monomer ¯oods the model
and the process is repeated.

2.2.2. Solid ground curing

Fig. 1. Data transfer between the CAD and the RP system. A similar method which uses ultra-violet radiation as the
energy source has been named solid ground curing (SGC). In
this method data from the CAD model are used to produce a
2. Rapid prototyping mask, through which the liquid is illuminated and cured.

2.1. Preparation of data 2.2.3. Selective laser sintering

With the selective laser sintering (SLS) method a thin
De®nition of the virtual model is a crucial part of RP layer of ®nely ground plastic powder is spread onto a
technology. The preparation of data can represent 23 of the working platform. The laser energy is directed onto the
total cost. Fig. 1 illustrates the ¯ow of data between different powder via a scanning system where it causes the powder to
virtual models of the component. sinter to become a solid. Then the working platform is
For all RP methods the starting point is a CAD model, lowered, a new covering of powder layer is spread and
either a 3D solid model or 3D surface model. CAD data can the scanning is repeated.
be created virtually or come directly from 3D sensors (such
as laser, sonic, or optical digitizers), medical imaging data 2.2.4. 3D printing
and any other source of 3D point data. The CAD ®le Similar to SLS is the 3D printing method, in which a
(sometimes in neutral format) is normally converted into binder phase is sprayed selectively onto the powder by
an STL ®le that is a faceted version of the surface of the means of ink-jet type printing heads.
model. Such a model is then ``sliced'' at distances equal to
the layer thickness. Additional information is supplied with 2.2.5. Fused deposition modelling
regard to the design of supports (when necessary), the The fused deposition modelling (FDM) machine is an XY
machine orientation of the workpiece and the scan path plotter device which carries an extrusion head. The build
for each layer. The physical object is then created using one material is heated to just above its melting point and
of the many currently available RP systems, a description of extruded in the areas within the bounds of the part. After
which now follows. extrusion the material solidi®es immediately and welds to
the previous layer.
2.2. Rapid prototyping techniques
2.2.6. Microcasting
There are a number of different RP systems, which can Microcasting is a droplet-based shape deposition manu-
produce both models and functional parts. Most of these facturing (SDM) process which consists of four processing
methods can also be used for the manufacturing of prototype stations such as thermal deposition, shot-peening, CNC
and production tools. milling and cleaning. A plasma arc robot produces discrete
droplets of super-heated metal which fall to the surface and
2.2.1. Stereolitography bond. Shot-peening is used for stress relief and then CNC
Stereolitography (SLA) is a method based on photo- milling to obtain the ®nal form of the layer.
polymerization of liquid monomer resin (Fig. 2). The sur-
2.2.7. Ballistic particle manufacturing
In a similar process called ballistic particle manufacturing
(BPM), a stream of molten material is ejected from a nozzle;
the material separates into droplets which hit the substrate
and immediately cold weld to form the part.

2.2.8. Laminated object manufacturing

In the laminated object manufacturing (LOM) method the
build material takes the form of a sheet of paper, metal,
plastic or composite. Each layer of the model is pro®led
from the sheet using a laser. This section is then laid on and
bonded to the previous layer using a hot roller which
Fig. 2. The principle of stereolitography. activates a heat sensitive adhesive.
 A. Rosochowski, A. Matuszak / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 106 (2000) 191±198 193

2.3. Secondary operations more general issue of rapid product development. Tradi-
tional methods of producing prototypes are usually skill
Prototype models often require further processing dependent, expensive and time consuming. This results in a
depending on the RP technique used. In many systems limited number of design iterations and the possibility of
support structures have to be detached from the model. This incurring further costs at the production stage. On the other
is done manually and requires some skill. A powder support hand, it is well known that low-volume products, as well as
is easier to deal with. Some methods provide only limited rapidly changing high-volume products, require quicker and
structural integrity, so that the models are subjected to cheaper development procedures to be able to compete on
further curing or sintering, depending on the material used the market. Looking for improvement in this ®eld, manu-
and its structure. A commonly employed secondary opera- facturers and tool makers are exploring different RP tech-
tion is mechanical or hand ®nishing to remove the stair-step niques. It seems that a major shift from normal prototype
surface texture inherent in all RP technologies. tooling practice to RT is underway.
Provided that the tools produced by RT are suf®ciently
durable, there is also scope for them to be employed in the
3. Rapid tooling production process.
Since the number of RT techniques is increasing, there is a
RT is a natural extension of RP. It originated from the need tendency to classify them into groups. Soft tooling is
to assess RP models in terms of their performance. To enable compared with hard tooling, indirect tooling with direct
performance validation, such models (prototypes) must be tooling, prototype tooling with production tooling, and so
produced using the same material and production process as on. The de®nitions of these groups are not clear, also the
will be used in full-scale production. Furthermore, to facil- borders are not well de®ned and overlap between their
itate a full range of performance tests, the number of domains is apparent. Despite this, one can suggest a classi-
prototypes required may be relatively large. ®cation of RT techniques based on practical aspects rather
Current RP technologies are neither capable of prototyp- than on strict de®nitions (Fig. 3). The following discussion
ing in a wide range of commercially available materials nor refers to this classi®cation, concentrating on producing
well suited to producing large numbers of models. This has patterns for the foundry industry, using patterns for soft
led to the adoption of multi-step procedures involving and hard tooling, and manufacturing tools directly on RP
various tooling options; such procedures are termed RT. machines.
Thus, RT processes complement the RP options by being
able to provide higher quantities of models in a wider variety 3.1. Rapid patterns for casting
of materials.
The importance of RT, however, goes far beyond com- Traditional casting of metal parts using RP patterns is not
ponent performance testing. It is an essential aspect of the always regarded as RT but often as rapid manufacturing or

Fig. 3. Classi®cation of RT.

194 A. Rosochowski, A. Matuszak / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 106 (2000) 191±198

rapid casting. Nevertheless, it is the most popular tooling-

related use of RP with direct consequences in RT.
Regardless of the casting method, the foundry industry
has as its central process the utilization of a physical pattern
to produce moulds into which to cast metal. Although this is
true for both the design and production cycles, it is mainly
the design stage that will bene®t from rapid patterns. The use
of RP technologies in the creation of casting patterns allows
a foundry to manufacture a metal part without the use of
tooling for small quantities. It also helps in optimizing the
casting design in terms of process and gating parameters. All
of this reduces the cost and time required to produce
prototype parts. Tooling costs are postponed until full-scale
production and since all modi®cations and improvements
can be made early on, the need to change the tooling whilst
Fig. 5. An SLS polycarbonate pattern for the investment casting of a
in production is eliminated.
cylinder head [4].

3.1.1. Investment casting

Investment casting is a sacri®cial pattern casting. Tradi-
tionally, a physical pattern is produced in casting wax and Alternatively to the temperature-sensitive wax patterns,
attached to a wax runner system. Then, it is dipped repeat- polycarbonate models produced by SLS can be used (Fig. 5).
edly into a ceramic slurry and dusted with refractory mate- The parts build much faster in polycarbonate then the wax
rial until the desired mould thickness is obtained in the form and the clean-up time is reduced. Post ®nishing is accom-
of a self-supporting shell. When ready, the shell is de-waxed plished by dipping or coating the part with a wax-based
in a steam autoclave and subsequently ®lled with metal. material to seal the surface. This enables the creation of
Popular prototype systems, such as FDM and SLS (Fig. 4), patterns with ®ne features, increased dimensional accuracy
are capable of building wax patterns directly. SGC and BPM and improved strength. Shell cracking and ash content have
are also reported to be able to fabricate wax patterns for not been major issues.
investment casting. Wax patterns are more readily accepted
and accommodated by the traditional foundry industry. 3.1.2. Sand casting
Other systems, such as SLA and LOM, have to use their Traditional sand casting can also bene®t from RT, which
own proprietary prototyping materials. The acrylic SLA is used for producing the patterns and core boxes used to
parts expand during burn-out and crack the ceramic shell. make moulds and cores, respectively.
To overcome this limitation a ¯ask (solid mould) casting A virtual model of the pattern is based on the shape of the
instead of a shell casting can be used. The latest method is casting with added cores when necessary. This means dis-
the QuickCast build style, which eliminates 95% of the regarding internal cavities and designing core prints. Virtual
internal mass of a part made of epoxy resin. During burn-out, models are then realized using one of the RP systems. LOM
the QuickCast pattern collapses before the ceramic shell is fairly popular for this application, since LOM models have
becomes overloaded. Additionally, only a small amount of the feeling and look of wood, which is a traditional foundry
ash is produced. tooling material.
The paper patterns of the LOM process also work well The same internal cavities and core prints are used to
with investment casting. The paper can be burnt out with create CAD models of cores. Such models can either be used
little expansion, however, the ash residue may be substantial. to produce LOM patterns for making cavities in resin core
boxes or, as negatives, to create cavities directly within solid
blocks of LOM material.

3.2. Soft tooling

Soft tooling can be obtained via replication from a

positive pattern or master. The alternative de®nition is based
on the rigidity and durability of the tooling, where polymeric
tools are referred to as soft tools. Despite some overlap,
these two de®nitions are not equivalent. Leaving this issue
open for academic discussion, the authors employed the
Fig. 4. An investment-cast exhaust manifold for a Chrysler car made from second de®nition, which distinguishes soft tooling from
an SLS wax pattern [3]. metallic or ceramic hard tooling.
 A. Rosochowski, A. Matuszak / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 106 (2000) 191±198 195

3.2.1. Silicone moulds The epoxy resin used is usually aluminium ®lled to reduce
Silicone moulding can be used to produce wax patterns, wear of the tool and improve heat transfer. If necessary,
and plastic or low-melting-point metal parts. The initial copper heating coils can be embedded into the resin and
forming of powder parts is also reported in this context. cooling passages machined.
If the RP pattern is based on the product alone, the ®rst Epoxy tools must be run with low injection and packing
step is to attach a runner to it. A release coating is applied pressures. Depending on the complexity of the part and the
and a block of silicone rubber is then cast around the material, the mould life is in the range of 50 to 500‡ pieces.
assembly. The cured block is cut along the parting line For reaction injection moulding (RIM), which is character-
and the pattern removed. The silicone mould is so ¯exible ized by low temperature and pressure, the reported tool life
that it can be removed from intricate and undercut shapes is in few thousands.
without dif®culty. The use of silicone tooling is limited to
low pressures, low volume and low temperature production 3.3. Hard tooling
processes.
A popular application is the vacuum casting of prototypes 3.3.1. Spray metal tooling
in a polyurethane material (Fig. 6). Polyurethane can be Metal spray moulds have been used successfully for low-
formulated with a wide variety of physical properties, which pressure processes such as vacuum forming, rotational
enables the simulation of many commonly used plastics. The moulding and RIM. Recently, due to advances in spray
life of a silicone mould depends largely on the surface ®nish metals and spraying techniques, it has also been used for
of the prototype pattern. In most instances it will reproduce injection moulding.
up to 20 parts with a gradual deterioration of surface quality. The sequence of steps is similar to that used to create
Another process using a silicone mould is spin casting. epoxy moulds, except that the pattern is ®rst metal sprayed
Prototype models are laid out on a disk of uncured rubber and then backed with the metal-®lled epoxy resin. Spraying
which is then vulcanized under pressure. After removing the with, e.g., a compressed air electric gun is continued until
masters, gates, runners and air vents are cut into the mould. the required thickness of metal shell is obtained (0.5±5 mm
During spin casting liquid metal or plastic is poured into the is reported). The pattern material has to have increased
central feed channel and as the mould is rotated at speed the strength and durability to withstand the thermal impact
centrifugal force ®lls the mould cavities. The expected life inherent in this technique: polycarbonate SLS masters as
of a mould varies from 100 to 300 cycles. well as machinable wax and ABS FDM masters (Fig. 7) have
been used successfully. SLA models also have been tried
3.2.2. Epoxy moulds with a protective re¯ecting coating.
Using epoxy moulds is often the fastest way to complete The properties of metal spray moulds depend on the metal
short runs of functional parts manufactured by injection used, its structure and the type of support of the metal shell.
moulding. The normal tool life is several hundred injection moulded
First, the positive master, e.g. an SLA, SLS or LOM parts. Very good results have been reported for nickel-spray
model, is buried in clay or plaster up to the parting line. tooling. The hardness of a nickel shell (Rockwell hardness
Alternatively, one can use a prototype model for the ®rst-half Hc 50±58) provides excellent abrasion resistance and the
of the part. After coating the master with a release agent, tool life is adequate for high volume production.
epoxy resin is poured into the mould box and cured. The
same procedure is repeated for the second half of the part. 3.3.2. Nickel electroformed tooling
Runners and gates are added to the master prior to casting or A nickel shell can be obtained by the electrodeposition
can be machined after casting. Air vents are usually added process. The mechanical properties of the shell together with
during the trials. the excellent reproduction of the surface ®nish have already
led to extensive use of this technique within the aerospace
industry. The only real problem is the time required to
electroform the shell (about 2 weeks for 3 mm). For proto-
type applications the shell thickness could possibly be

Fig. 7. An ABS FDM prototype of a Fiat automotive part used as the

Fig. 6. Silicone moulds for vacuum casting [5]. pattern for spray metal tooling [6].
196 A. Rosochowski, A. Matuszak / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 106 (2000) 191±198

reduced to 1 mm with rigidity of the tool provided by a good

backing.

3.3.3. Cast metal tooling

Tooling for use in injection moulding and die casting can
be produced by investment casting. As was described earlier,
RP technologies can be used to produce sacri®cial patterns
for investment casting. This time, however, the patterns for
moulds and dies, rather than for components, are required.
Therefore, one has to generate a reverse of the component in
CAD by dividing the component on the split line, de®ning
the cavity shapes and adding the remainder of the tool
halves. A prototype mould can then be produced on the Fig. 8. A composite epoxy/metal mould for casting wax [7].
RP equipment and used as a pattern for investment casting.
Alternatively, starting from the positive prototype, one
can cast a resin mould and use it as a pattern for the Shaw 3.4.2. Metal powder tools
process or for the sand casting of the metal mould. In both SLS has the advantage over other RP systems in that it can
cases some machining may be necessary to add missing process a variety of different powdered materials and espe-
features or improve the surface ®nish. cially metals. This allows metal injection moulds to be
Tooling can be cast in various metals such as aluminium produced directly from CAD data.
and zinc for prototyping purposes (100±500 shots) or in tool The SLS RapidTool process uses iron-based powders
steel for high volume production. coated with a thermoplastic binder. Consolidation of the
metal powder is achieved by selective melting of the binder.
3.3.4. Keltool tooling The green part is then sintered and subsequently in®ltrated
The process introduced by Keltool involves metal powder with a second metal, which results in a fully-dense part.
that has been coated with a plastic binder. The powder is Polishing and ®tting into a mould base ends the whole cycle,
poured into a silicone mould created from a negative pattern which takes about 1 week. Moulds and cores for injection
of the component shape. Alternatively, the positive master moulding produced with the RapidTool process have excel-
can be covered with the powder. Initial heating at 1008C lent physical properties, yielding quantities of more than
produces a green part. Final sintering and copper in®ltration 50 000 parts.
creates hard tool inserts (Rockwell hardness Rc 35±55) An interesting application of direct laser sintering is
which faithfully copy the original. Keltool inserts made producing copper EDM electrodes for injection mould
of tool steel should survive for at least one million shots. tooling and forge dies.
The process is best suited for small parts.
3.4.3. Ceramic powder tools
3.4. Direct tooling The 3DP direct shell production casting (DSPC) process
produces ceramic moulds for metal casting directly from
Creating tooling directly on RP machines is the ultimate CAD design data.
challenge to RT applications. Most RP methods use rela- DSPC can be used to produce parts of virtually any shape.
tively soft materials as the building medium and therefore The concept of using a ceramic shell allows negative drafts,
are not suitable for direct tooling. Nevertheless, many trials no parting lines and no core prints. A digital model of the
have been run, and now the ®rst successful applications in mould, including a gating system and internal cores for
this ®eld are appearing. hollow parts, is used directly in the 3DP process. After
printing the entire mould in ceramic powder, it is ®red and
3.4.1. Resin tools the unbound powder removed. The resulting mould can be
Direct tooling, in the form of SLA epoxy prototypes, used to produce parts from any castable alloy.
has been used for some time. Solid dies of epoxy resin DSPC is used for prototype and short-production runs. It
have been employed for the injection of wax patterns for is claimed to yield functional metal parts in days instead of
investment casting (Fig. 8). This technique has taken advan- weeks or months (Fig. 9).
tage of the 808C glass transition temperature of the epoxy
resin, which is higher than the melting point (50±558C) of 3.4.4. Microcast tools
many investment waxes. The injection pressure used was Microcasting, one of the wide variety of SDF processes,
3.5 MPa. has been shown to be useful for direct tool production. An
Epoxy dies for injection moulding have also been tried injection moulding die for an automotive component, shown
with different plastics, e.g. polyurethane and polycarbonate. in Fig. 10, has been obtained from low-carbon steel by
The number of parts produced from the tools were 100. microcasting. Typically for the SDF methods, the layer
 A. Rosochowski, A. Matuszak / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 106 (2000) 191±198 197

in the tool and subsequently conveyed to the manufactured

components. Therefore, the initial dimensional accuracy, as
well as dimensional stability of prototype patterns, should be
considered carefully.
A particular problem with all prototype models is their
relatively poor surface ®nish, which results from the layered
structure inherent in the building method. In turn, most RT
techniques accurately reproduce the surface details of the
pattern. Since many RT tools tend to be hard and wear
resistant, it is usually easier to ensure the good ®nish of the
Fig. 9. An engine intake manifold made for Ford using DSPC [8]. product by improving the ®nish of the pattern rather than
using secondary ®nishing operations. Special, sometimes
elaborate, techniques are used to achieve high-quality pat-
thickness was substantial and variable (1.15±1.49 mm). The terns.
support material was bound steel powder, subsequently RT has been most successful in casting and injection
removed by an air/water jet. The reported tensile strength moulding applications. Its use in metal forming applications
was 530 MPa. is very limited due to the normally high requirements
regarding surface ®nish, strength and abrasion resistance
3.4.5. Laminated metal sheets of metal forming tools. One of the few exceptions is cast
The idea of using metal sheets for producing laminated resin tools for the prototype sheet metal forming of small
metal tools assumes the employment of a process similar to components. Another example is EDM electrodes produced
LOM. The problem of bonding technique, however, has to by RT, which can be used to make forging dies. Improve-
be resolved to ensure the structural integrity of the ®nal ments in RT techniques, especially those incorporating
product. powder metallurgy technology, may soon change this pic-
ture, enabling metal forming processes to bene®t from RT as
3.5. Discussion casting and injection moulding already do.
With advances in the high-speed CNC-machining of
The RT techniques described here do not constitute an tools, there is a tendency to treat this as a part of RT. In
exhaustive list. There is a lot of research around the world the authors' opinion only RP related techniques, with RP
into the development of potential new methods. Known based on adding not removing material, should be referred to
techniques are being improved and used in new applications. as RT. High-speed machining should be viewed as a com-
Some issues, however, remain common whatever the tech- peting technology which, e.g. in Japan is favoured over RT.
nique. In some tooling applications, with simpler shapes involved,
RP models are based on standard virtual models of the CNC-machining may be a viable alternative, and it seems
intended components. However, models designed with tool- that in the future these two technologies may become
ing in mind should incorporate tool-related features such as complementary rather than competing. An interesting recent
draft, shrinkage allowance, split lines, runners and risers and example of such synergy is the scanning of a rapid model to
features to ensure alignment of tool sections. machine a mould cavity.
The dimensional accuracy of RP models is not a critical RP methods are inherently slow, which manifests itself in
issue as far as the visualization function is concerned. Even the manufacturing time of a single model being measured in
the ®tment trials may not suffer from limited inaccuracy. hours. It is even longer when the preparation of CAD data is
However, in RT applications any error in the model is copied included. In RT applications, however, this compares favour-
ably with the normal procedures of design and manufacture
of prototype tools. It is especially evident for complex
components, which require several design iterations. The
cost of tooling produced by RT methods is also reduced
when compared with traditional machining. Savings of 50%
in time and cost are often reported by companies.

4. Conclusions

Due to the pressure of international competition, new

products must be more quickly and cheaply developed,
manufactured and introduced to the market. The rapid
Fig. 10. A microcast die [9]. manufacturing of prototype components, with a view to
198 A. Rosochowski, A. Matuszak / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 106 (2000) 191±198

assessing aesthetics, ergonomics and ®tment, has played a References

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