Application of soft tooling in the product development process | |
| Author | Susantha, S. A. D. P. |
| Call Number | AIT Thesis no. ISE-98-33 |
| Subject(s) | New products Prototypes, Engineering |
| Note | A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering, School of Advanced Technologies |
| Publisher | Asian Institute of Technology |
| Abstract | In early stages, Rapid Prototyping (RP) technology was mainly used for design verification task only. But invention of new RP technologies as well as new materials changed the application of RP from design verification to functional prototypes. This study was based on company case study to evaluate the product design and development process of a typical industrial product. The main focus of the research was to propose a procedure to manufacture prototypes for the selected product and evaluate the proposed process. The prototypes should be manufactured same material as in the final design. The proposed manufacturing process was an integration of RP and lost wax casting. One of the main tasks of wax casting is the preparation of tooling. There are many possible ways to manufacture hard tooling for the wax casting. The objective of the research is to avoid this hard tooling process and introduce the soft tooling by use of RP&M technology. This may result to reduce the cost of tooling as well as product development time. The soft tooling process was introduced by use of Laminated Object Manufacturing (LOM) technology. The wax casting of the part was done by using the LOM tool. These wax patterns were used for traditional investment casting process. Secondly the application of silicon rubber molds for wax casting process was investigated. This area of soft tooling can be extended to hard tooling such as Stereolithography tooling for injection molding or Laminated Tooling for Injection molding/Die casting/Sheet metal forming. |
| Year | 1998 |
| Type | Thesis |
| School | School of Advanced Technologies |
| Department | Other Field of Studies (No Department) |
| Academic Program/FoS | Industrial Systems Engineering (ISE) |
| Chairperson(s) | Naber, Helmut ; |
| Examination Committee(s) | Bohez, Erik. L. J.; Igel, Barbara ; |
| Scholarship Donor(s) | NORAD; |
| Degree | Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 1998 |