Towards zero waste in additive manufacturing: a case study investigating one pressurised rapid tooling mould to ensure resource efficiency

In addition to series production of products for sale, tools used for internal company production processes are manufactured by means of additive manufacturing. This rapid tooling enables innovative production processes, which exceed the performance limit of conventional manufacturing processes. Tools, e.g., moulds for laminating with complex geometries can be produced cost-effectively. Currently, rapid tooling moulds are designed in a conservative manner. They are usually made of solid material. However, this solid design leads to a waste of resources. Additive manufacturing is well suited to lightweight design due to the layering process. The core of the mould can be hollowed out completely or pointwise without increased production effort. As a result, the consumption of material can be minimised. However, the moulds from this process simultaneously lose stiffness, which means the necessary manufacturing precision cannot be met. This represents an optimisation problem between low material consumption and low build time but retaining sufficient stiffness of the mould. The scope of this paper is the investigation of factors of influence based on vacuum pressure laminating as an application scenario. Using finite element simulation as well as the simulation of the building process, different core structures of the mould were investigated in relation to its deformation, its manufacturing time, and its consumption of material for production. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.