Recent Development and Trend of Rapid Tooling Technology

摘要

Rapid Tooling (RT) based on the Rapid Prototyping (RP) technology has broken the limitation of traditional tooling technology, and made great rapid progress recently. First, the indirect rapid tooling (IRT) and the direct rapid tooling (DRT) are compared in this paper. Second, recent development of various rapid tooling technologies are introduced briefly, including spray and coated metal tooling, middle and low melted point alloys tooling, metal tooling by deposition technology, electroforming tooling, aluminum-filled epoxy tooling s, silicone rubber tooling, silicone rubber-ceramic pattern tooling, rapid precise casting tooling and rapid tooling with powder metallurgy, and various direct rapid tooling technologies. Last, the trend of rapid prototyping + rapid tool technology is analyzed. It is shown that RP+RT will be a new technology combined with rapid manufacturing (RP+RT+RM). These new achievement and new progress are surely making the RT technology to be a main development aspect in 21st century.