The New Future of Mold Maker

The idea behind a new and innovative technique of mold making with the invention of many new technologies came from an inventor’s dream to create direct-to-metal molds quickly and at low cost. - addressing one of the unsatisfied needs of the manufacturing's largest. However, consistent success has been elusive despite continuous attempts at creating a direct-to-metal solution. But a new, patented process has been developed called Ultrasonic Consolidation(TM) (UC) that can be the answer the manufacturing sector has been seeking for a long time.



How It Works

For aluminum tooling, the features of machining and rapid tooling are combined by the UC process and its unique machine into a one-button system. From CAD, UC works, creating tooling with specific feature-to-feature accuracy, produce true metallurgical bonds, and applying sound-to-merge layers of metal are done. When you combine additive and subtractive manufacturing processes it allows features that for production normally require EDM – that with a single program, in a single operation is fabricated on a single machine.

On the user's PC a special applications software system has been developed that runs. From standard STL, IGES files, and CAD, or processed NC machine data machine codes are created. To simplify part viewing and generation the software is designed and along with this it gives high dimensional accuracy and surface finish quality.



The machine itself is a self-contained unit, about the size of a smaller NC milling machine, and is designed in such a way so that it can fit into almost any machine shop. By an industrial-quality control system, the machine is driven. Users have also been provided the ability to stop or recover a build.

The need to create a plastic or wax pattern, making a mold, or cast and finish a part is eliminated with the use of this material deposition method with aluminum tape. Consequently, UC is useful for producing tire molds; blow molding, molds for composite lay-up, aluminum tooling for plastic injection molding, or any other aluminum tooling application.



Benefits

This aluminum tooling solution for both consumer and functional testing allows parts to be produced fast and at low cost enough to supply parts in the exact material of choice of the designer. With this, the design and manufacturing functions work closely and create tooling it makes it cost-effective very early in the production process. As a result, during the design and test cycle manufacturing processes can be validated and appropriate adjustments can be made.

Also, concerning the size of the tools that can be produced many existing rapid tooling processes are limited. An added benefit is that simultaneously there can be the creation of multiple small molds by mold maker.

UC benefits manufacturers in one other area which is Confidentiality. As product choices proliferate and design consciousness expands the protection of new product designs is an area of increasing concern. During the prototyping cycle, rapid tooling processes that are suitable for internal use by design and development engineers enable companies to keep sensitive product data in-house.