B.J.
Sorry for not responding before but I have been swamped with work. A few
years ago I presented a paper at SME on the use of Laminated Tooling for
moulding polyurethane foam parts. The tool was about 1 x 1 x 1m and made
from 1mm aluminium sheet.
I believe this tool is still in production at Ford Utica Trim plant.
I will send a copy of the paper to you.
The tool was finally assembled by Simco in Detroit. If you are interested
you should contact:
Dave Simon on 810 772 1910
Good luck
Phill
Prof. P. M. Dickens
Dept. of Mech. & Manuf. Eng.
De Montfort University
The Gateway
Leicester
England LE1 9BH
Tel: +44 (0)116 257 7689
Fax: +44 (0)116 257 7025
Mobile: +44 (0)468 827039
Email: pdickens@dmu.ac.uk
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/RMG/Welcome.htm
-----Original Message-----
From: B. J. Arnold-Feret [mailto:ppsltd@airmail.net]
Sent: 12 January 2000 10:55
To: Delft Spline Systems
Cc: rp-ml@bart.lpt.fi
Subject: Re: Rapid tooling for large parts
I agree that high speed CNC milling is probably the best solution, but I am
hoping that someone has done some alternative tooling for large parts.
In the list quite a few months back, there was some discussion but no
examples of using pattern based tooling (SLA master) for the manufacturing
of blow molding cast aluminum tools. While I was with Plynetics there was
experiementation with epoxy/composite tools using steel encasements of the
mold for structural foam that had moderate levels of achievement. I was
hoping that someone else had success stories of alternative tooling
processes with large plastic parts that I could talk about and point to as
"see, this can work!" examples.
While doing a blow mold tool using RP/RT for many high volume applications
that use commodity type resins is probably not realistic, it seems that
someone should have looked at doing an engineering application using a tool
produced via RP/RT.
B. J. Arnold-Feret
ppsltd@airmail.net
For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/
For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/
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