A comparative study of two rapid tooling technologies; Coproinmold – Selective Laser Sintering

Abstract

Rapid tooling (RT) is the technology that implements rapid prototyping (RP) techniques in the fabrication of tools and molds, especially for injection of plastics. Recently, RT has gained importance to the point that it is already considered to be a viable alternative to the methods of conventional machining. Two important techniques of RT are compared in this paper. This comparison is based on experimental data on the surface texture, dimensional quality, life cycle, costs and time of development of the tooling.

Keywords

• Rapid tooling (RT)
• indirect tooling
• direct tooling
• Coproinmold
• selective laser sintering (SLS)