Reduce your lead time for plastic injection mould tools by 50%
Designing and manufacturing tool sets for injection moulding has traditionally been a lengthy process. To keep costs as low as possible it’s become a common practice to off-shore the engineering stages to tool makers in the Far East. This does, however, add to the time delay.
In a world where companies increasingly want to reduce lead-times and time-to-market, it’s clear that a fresh approach is required to minimise the time required for both the manufacture of injection mould tool sets and the subsequent modifications or repair.
Thanks to our unique approach to injection mould tool making, we are able to offer a rapid tooling service. This reduces the production time for complete tool sets by around 50%, and the time required for modifications or repair to days rather than weeks, as has previously been the case.
We use a combination of standard bolster tool parts, with custom designed mould tool inserts, produced using our advanced hybrid additive manufacturing system. All design and engineering work is carried out in-house by our skilled and experienced engineering team, to ensure a prompt and efficient service at competitive cost.
- 50% faster than most competing processes
- For new mould tools, insert repair or modification
- Highest quality
- Custom engineered
- Standard bolster sets where appropriate
- Design and applications advice
- Full technical and sales support
Rapid injection mould tooling service
Plastic injection mould tooling often takes up to four months, from design to delivery. This is especially true if engineering is offshored to the Far East, where problems of communication, culture and shipping can extend lead-times still further.
One option is to use aluminium bridge tooling. However, these tools have a limited operating life and provide poor quality in high volume applications.
Our solution is to use integrated metal additive manufacturing and CNC machining technology to produce high quality injection mould tool inserts, combined with standard or pre-manufactured bolster tool parts. This innovative approach allows us to produce complete customised injection mould tool sets quickly and at highly competitive rates.
Get in touch, to learn more about our rapid tooling service
Contact our rapid tooling team today to discover how we can help you reduce the lead-time and cost of your next injection mould tool set.
Read the case study on how our rapid injection mould service produced a 40k first production batch within 5 days
Injection mould tools in under 4 weeks – how we do it
Our integrated metal additive manufacturing and CNC machining technology combines direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) with conventional CNC machining in a single production system.
This produces plastic injection mould tooling, including inserts and cavity units:
- Quickly
- Consistently
- To extremely high levels of accuracy
- With minimal requirements for additional machining
The system produces the most significant time savings for complex mould features, such as the deep, narrow slots required to produce thin internal walls. It can also be used to create conformal cooling channels inside injection mould tool inserts; this significantly reduces cycle times and improves the quality of complex injection moulded plastic parts.
We can reduce lead-times still further with a unique combination of conventional subtractive CNC machining and additive manufacturing.
Our custom designed laser sintered mould core and cavity inserts are printed from a range of metals directly onto standard machined mould tool base parts.
The completed core and cavity components are then installed in a standard design of bolster, preassembled and ready for production.
To accommodate a wide range of possible part designs, we have engineered a range of standard bolsters suitable for different sizes of components.
The range can accommodate simple two-part core and cavity designs and more complex components requiring moveable side cores. Complete customised solutions are also available using this system.
In each case, our Rapid Production Mould Tools can be engineered quickly and efficiently at competitive cost.
