FDM MODELED POLYMER TOOLING FOR PLASTIC INJECTION MOLDING

Rapid Prototyping is being accepted globally by industries for its potential in saving on process time and cost. Rapid Tooling helps Rapid Prototyping grow beyond its conventional Feel & Fit status to Feel Fit Function status and is increasingly becoming popular. However, potential of rapid prototyping for normal production run is still not being realized. In that situation Rapid Tooling becomes a viable alternative. The greatest opportunity for rapid tooling implementation is the use of Additive Manufacturing (AM) technology. Further, polymer based direct rapid tooling provide large cost reduction and can also be readily accessible by industries. With the advances in materials along with the new access and low cost plastic based- AM equipment, direct use Polymer Rapid Tools (PRTs) would be a far more advantageous option in creating injection molds for low and highly flexible production. However, the use of polymer based direct rapid tooling by industries is curtailed due to the issues with the dimensional stability of the polymer based rapid tooling molds. Apart from dimensional tolerances, there are also issues with the life of these polymer based mold as they wear fast and are also not able to sustain high injection pressures in an Injection molding machine. Another, major problem with the polymer based rapid tooling is the poor thermal conductivity of polymeric materials due to which there is an increase in the cooling time and ultimately leading to decrease in productivity. Therefore, before proposing polymer based rapid tooling as a solution to industries to cut down the product development time and bring down the costs, a thorough study of the issues related to the same is imperative. This paper investigates the dimensional accuracy of striker component produced by ABS mold inserts. For dimensional accuracy a reverse engineering technique3D scanning is used which is compared with CAD file and inspected with COMET plus software. Further, the outputs are validated with vernier caliper. The mold insert is manufactured by Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) technology which is used on injection molding machine