Rapid Tooling Services
What is Rapid Tooling?
Rapid tooling is often referred to as prototype tooling, bridge tooling, or soft tooling. Rapid tooling is a crucial step on the path to production. It involves the manufacture of tools used to create products, such as rapid injection molds, rapid die cast molds, sheet metal prototype molds, quick and easy jigs and fixtures, and other custom parts.
Therefore, creating rapid tooling to conduct trial production of hundreds or even thousands of parts before mass production is a very useful process for design optimization, functional testing, or pre-production verification.
Our Rapid Tooling Processes
Fast Mold Tooling Making
Enjoy simplified mold design and quick mold making with soft steel or aluminum mold cavities for rapid results. Stock mold components and mold bases are also available for increased speed.
Low Volume Injection Molding
Asides from the regular production molds, we also combine injection molding with our rapid tooling capabilities, allowing us to produce low-volume injection molded parts quickly and cost-efficiently.
Why Choose Wayken’s Rapid Tooling Services?
High Efficiency and Quality
Our expertise ensures that we produce high-quality prototype injection molding tools that are close to or 100% match the final production level. We deliver the right tools with mass production quality.
Competitive Prices
Our expert engineers combine advanced techniques with the right materials to give cost-effective solutions. With a better knowledge of rapid tooling designs and material selection, we ensure high-quality molds at the lowest possible price.
Design for Manufacturing Support
As part of prototype injection molding process, we offer design for manufacturing (DFM) support to reveal any issues with your design. Thus, you can make the required changes before prototyping or production begins. This will help save costs.
Timely Delivery
The right combination of technologies and experience results in faster production of prototypes for functional testing. The speed reduces the time you will spend in the prototyping stage, ensuring faster time to market.
Reliable Process
Every one of our projects begins with extensive material testing for optimum performance. Therefore, you can be sure of the composition and integrity of the materials used. We then combine industry-leading technologies to ensure 100% satisfaction with our rapid tooling service.
One-stop Machining Capabilities
Combined with rapid prototyping in CNC machining, EDM machining, 3D printing, vacuum casting and finishing experiences in product development, WayKen can produce rapid production tooling and rapid injection mold quickly and efficiently.
Common Types of Rapid Tooling
Aluminum Mold Tooling
This is the ideal choice for prototype injection molding because it is a cost-effective means of producing injection molded parts. Using aluminum ensures dimensional stability in the mold tooling, significantly reducing waste production and part deformation during production. Aluminum molds are also easier to cut, thereby reducing tooling costs by up to 25%. Using aluminum molds also reduces cycle times by 30-40%. All of these combine to ensure faster turnarounds.
Steel Mold Tooling
Steel is a high-quality, solid, and sturdy material with a longer life cycle. It is more suitable for high-volume production runs and for producing molds from engineering-grade plastics. Despite its long life cycle, it is more expensive than aluminum and may require more time to produce mold tooling and prototypes.
Rapid Tooling & Prototype Injection Molding Services
Materials for Prototype Injection Molding
Almost all plastics is ideal for prototype injection molding. The common used plastics are listed below:
Advantages of Rapid Tooling
Rapid tooling’s increasing rate of adoption is due to its many benefits.
Mold Customization
Rapid prototype tooling allows you to create custom molds with desired dimensions and specifications. You can also choose different materials for their quality control tests. This will help you decide on the best material for your project.
Thorough Design and Functionality Testing
Rapid tooling allows you to make multiple molds for producing several prototypes within a short period, sometimes in days. This provides the freedom to test new ideas and make changes to the old ones. As a result, you can improve your design functionality and the market value of your products.
Faster Time to Market
Faster mold production also results in the faster creation of prototypes and final products. The speed reduces how long you spend at the prototyping stage and helps you get your products to the market faster.
Increased ROI
Shorter product development time and faster time to market mean that you can start recouping your investments more quickly. Also, lower prototyping and production costs ensure you get returns faster because you will incur fewer expenses during production.
How Does Injection Mold Tooling Work?
Need as few as 100 or more than 100,000 injection molded parts? Injection mold tooling is a cost-effective solution for your product development process.
Optimized Design for Manufacturability (DFM)
We incorporate design for manufacturability (DFM) into every aspect of the injection molding process, from part design to injection mold tooling, materials selection, and machining process. No need to wait until production to reveal issues with the design. Our optimized design for manufacturability ensures cost-effective tooling and molding of parts to scale.
Choose the Right Material of Mold Tools
The right material for mold tools will involve considerations such as intended use, volume requirements, design complexity, and mold structure. Not sure which tooling materials to choose? WayKen will help you weigh each of these advantages to find the best rapid tooling solution for your product needs.
We can make rapid mold tools from Aluminum 7075, P20, and NAK80 semi-hardened steels and H13 fully-hardened steel. In addition, we also offer standard SPI finishes, EDM texturing, and a range of etched textures including Mold-Tech® MT series and VDI® 3400 series.
Rapid Tooling Manufacturing Process
In order to fully satisfy the need for rapid production and low-cost reduction, normally we utilize the Master Unit Die Quick-Change (MUD) System which is proven to save rapid tooling process time and reduce costs. Even more importantly, engineering changes involve only the MUD mold insert, not an entire standard mold base. You can also group several similar parts together on what is known as a family tool for greater savings. In addition, manual or semi-automatic inserts are also often used in rapid mold tooling.
Aluminum Mold Tooling – Receive Plastic Parts In 3 Weeks Or Less
High-performance aluminum alloys offer fast and efficient machinability and better thermal conductivity, which helps build molds faster and at a lower cost. More than just a bridge for prototyping or accelerating product launches, aluminum molds are a successful alternative to steel molds that will continue to drive and influence the future of the plastics industry.
