Studies of rapid soft tooling with conformal cooling channels for plastic injection moulding

A research and development (R&D) study of rapid soft tooling technology for plastic injection moulding is presented. The main objective of this R&D work was to propose some original approaches to integrate advanced processing technologies, such as rapid prototyping (RP) and rapid tooling (RT), with composite materials chilled by conformal cooling channels to manufacture plastic injection moulds. The term "soft-tool" is related to the resistance and heterogeneity of new materials such as composite polymeric mixtures, or aluminium-filled epoxy, available for manufacturing. In order to systematise the choice of several alternative materials and characterising them relating to its processing technology and application research studies are in progress. Both materials and technology parameters must be customised in order to achieve the goals. The forthcoming objective is to improve a matrix/algorithm for decision to aide the technology and materials selection. The different devices and features in soft tooling are demonstrated with some case studies applying RT technology to produce injection moulds for plastics. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.