A uk rapid tooling technology company has developed a production process that can create injection moulded components, such as customised car parts, without machining by using arrays of precision placed pins. Surface Generation is using a variant of its Subtractive Pin Tooling process that has drastically reduced time and cost for manufacturing components such as military body armour. The system works by raising arrays of precision pins to create the front face of the tool, and with little or no machining it can produce final specification injection moulded components. 'It's a hybridised additive and subtractive technology,' explained Surface Generation chief executive Ben Halford. 'A CAD file is processed to provide data to move the pins into the desired shape, and this can either be used directly as an infinitely reconfigurable mould or we skim the top of the pin array by milling to create an exact surface.'
展开▼
