Prototype tooling and soft tooling are widely used in product development, especially in Automotive, Consumer products, and medical industries. To get high-quality products made by prototype tooling, engineers need to understand clearly how the prototype tooling works. In this article, we explore what is prototype tooling and its advantages, materials, applications, and more.
What is prototype tooling?
Prototype tooling, also referred to as soft tooling or rapid tooling, is made of soft materials such as silicone, Aluminum, and Soft steel and is used for prototype injection molding to create prototypes or parts for testing or on-demand manufacturing. it is a cheap and fast turnaround solution when small volumes are required.
Benefits of Prototype Tooling
Reduced Cost
the cost of the prototype tooling is cheap compared with a production tooling which could be affordable to make the plastic parts used for testing and design verification.
Fast to Market
Generally, Prototype tooling can be made from just 3 days to 3 weeks, this short lead time will let the users get the product very fast and put it into the market to win more business.
Various Materials
Prototype tooling can work on a wide range of materials which could give engineers to test and get the right materials as production needs.
Design Validation
Prototype tooling can work on the same plastic materials as production tooling, and test the parts before mass production, the test result can be used for design validation and make changes if any test failure happens. it can eliminate the risk before big investments.
Prototype tooling materials
Silicone
Silicone tooling or Silicone molds are usually used for casting urethane prototypes. They are made of soft material with good flexibility, stability, and Durability. Different grades of silicone materials can be used to make molds for different products. However, due to their softness, silicone molds have a lifetime of around 25 copies.
Aluminum
Aluminum is a good material for making prototype tooling because it is an easy, machinable metal, which can save time in manufacturing the tooling. Aluminum tooling usually produces parts of less than 1000 pieces because aluminum is not strong enough to resist the impact of injections too often.
Soft Steel
Soft steel such as P20 and NAK80 are commonly used to make prototype tooling for low-volume injection molding. Soft steel is harder than aluminum which has a better lifespan which means it can used for producing more parts and up to 10000 pieces.
How to make prototype tooling?
Generally, there are two common methods to make a prototype tooling in a short time. Direct Method and Indirect Method.
Direct Approach
The Direct approach is to create the molding core and cavity inserts with rapid prototyping techniques such as CNC machining on aluminum or soft steel block and metal 3D printing directly based on the 3D model of tooling.
Indirect Approach
The indirect approach uses master patterns as a base to make the prototype soft tooling such as silicone mold. These soft toolings can create a certain number of replicas of the master patterns. this means the quality of the products made by these toolings is up to the quality of the material patterns.
Tips for making a prototype tooling
Even creating prototype tooling is much easier than creating mass-production hard tooling. However, there are also many techniques during the manufacturing process to save costs and improve tooling quality. some of the tips for making Prototype tooling are below:
- Use standard mold bases and only produce inserts to save cost.
- if allowed, use aluminum or soft steels that can be machined more quickly.
- Avoid using additional processes like EDM (Electrical Discharge Machining).
- Incorporate manual inserts where applicable.
Applications of prototype tooling
Automotive Industry
The automotive industry had a long lead time in producing the hard tooling of cars and car components. Prototype tooling can help a lot to get the parts in ahead to make the test by engineers which could avoid design issues and make the new cars fast to the market. Prototype tooling is widely used especially for innovation projects that need to make a lot of tests before use in the market.
Medical Industry
In the medical industry, prototype tooling can help get the medical device parts quickly and accurately, which can expedite the regulatory approval process and bring innovative treatments and diagnostic tools to market faster. it is widely used for the quick creation of various medical products such as custom implants, surgical instruments, and diagnostic devices.
Consumer product
Prototype tooling used in the consumer product industry can support on-demand manufacturing when the volume is small because the market changes fast and various similar products are needed.
Prototype tooling vs production tooling
Tooling materials
Prototype tooling uses soft materials such as silicone, and soft steels while production tooling usually uses Hard steels. Common soft steels used for prototype tooling such as P20 and NAK80. and hard steel such as S416 used for production toolings.
Production volume
Production tooling with hard steel can produce hundreds of thousands to millions of parts. however, prototype tooling with soft steel material can only produce less than 10,000 before it degrades.
Cost
Prototype tooling requires a lower investment to be produced than hard tooling due to the material cost and machining costs. and also it will be more cost-effective when a modification is needed.
Lead Time
Making a prototype tooling commonly takes from 1 week to 4 weeks. but making a production tooling commonly takes from 1 month to 4 months.
Quality
In terms of Quality, parts produced by production tooling will be better than parts made by prototype tooling because production has a better design of cooling and injection systems.
Applicable Project Stage
Prototype tooling usually applies to the design validation stage and production tooling applies to the mass production stage.
Alternatives to soft tooling for rapid prototypes
Prototype CNC machining
Prototype CNC machining creates plastic parts with a computer-controlled process that uses a precise cutter to remove the material from a block and then form the shape of the parts same as the 3D data. it is perfect for creating high-precision prototypes in a short lead time with low cost.
Prototype 3D printing
Prototype 3D printing can make more complex geometry parts than CNC machining, with a faster lead time and lower cost, however, the part strength is not as good as CNC machining and prototype injection molding because it uses a layer-by-layer method to create the plastic part.
Conclusion
As this article explains everything about prototype tooling, KUSLA, as a low-volume manufacturing supplier in China, is capable of making prototype tooling fast and injecting high-quality standard plastic parts. Contact us if you need more want to know more about prototype tooling or any low-volume production projects.
