Industrial Pattern and Tool Making
Reduce tooling costs and lead times while improving quality.
Types of Available Tooling and Parts:
Epoxy and Silicone Molds
Get tooling in days, not months.
Reduces investment costs for short-run production.
Lower material costs than 3D printing.
Reusable tooling allows for many castings.
Many available casting materials, including: Urethane, epoxy, polyester, medical- and food-grade resins, plaster, and many other resins and composite materials.
Injection Molds and Inserts
Injection mold tooling in days or weeks, not months.
Very inexpensive part cost.
Long tool life: over ten thousand units for prototype tooling, hundreds of thousands of units for production tooling.
Top-quality aesthetic finish and mechanical properties compared to other rapid prototype technologies.
Sand Casting Patterns
The least expensive way to fabricate small quantities of small to large metal parts.
Typical materials are aluminum, bronze, zinc and steel.
Tooling can be produced in less than 1-2 weeks and costs a fraction of traditional methods.
Capable suppliers of core boxes, follow boards, gates and risers and other necessary sand cast tooling.
Investment Cast Patterns, Molds and Waxes
Highest quality finish of all casting methods.
Typical materials include aluminum, bronze and steel.
Available tooling includes: master patterns, silicone rubber molds and wax burnout patterns.
Able to print one-off or small batches of direct burnout patterns without investing wax tooling.
Vacuum and Thermoform Tooling
Heavy gauge production plastics available like ABS, Polyethylene, Polystyrene and Polycarbonate.
Light gauge packaging plastics available like PET and Polystyrene.
Able to form parts up to 12 feet long.
Prototype tooling available in as few as 2 days.
Production tooling is good for over 100,000 forms and is porous for superior part quality.
Carbon Fiber, Fiberglass and Other Composite Tools
Decrease tooling and mold lead time compared to traditional methods.
Increase complexity of design without increasing cost.
Soluble cores available for hollow parts.
Waxed finishes available for easy de-molding.
Save money on prototype and production tools.
Sheet Metal Stamping and Forming Tools
Very low-cost tooling for small batches of sheet metal parts.
Male and female tooling available for traditional two-die stamping as well as single-die hydro-forming.
Tools delivered in a fraction of the time compared to traditional methods.
Inexpensive and durable composite tooling available as castings from patterns.
Robotic Arm End Effectors
Custom tooling that fits any part with complex internal geometries like vacuum channels.
Reduce weight, inertia and material waste during fabrication.
Simplified designs are easier to engineer, manufacture and assemble, cutting down on cost and time for tooling fabrication.
Improve tool life by cutting down on breakable components.
Molded Paper Pulp Packaging Tools
Get high-accuracy tooling for a fraction of the cost of machined tools.
Prototype tooling can also be used as permanent tooling for thousands or even tens of thousands of molds.
Tools can be turned around in days instead of weeks.
Tools can be used as patterns to make tooling for multiple lines or facilities.
Custom Jigs, Clamps, Fixtures and Other Tooling
Most miscellaneous tooling can be fabricated rapidly and for less cost using additive manufacturing.
Able to use existing CAD data for the part to design mating tooling
Quickly test for geometric conformity or hold parts for post operations or inspection.