Direct Rapid Tool Production

Modern demands on new part development and production chain are setting higher limits regarding short development and production time, as well as high level of flexibility. Tool development and production is almost always on a critical path. On the other hand, time has become the most important parameter. Rapid Tooling (RT) procedures can be one of the possible solutions. Rapid Tooling represents a series of mostly automated procedures, which enables production of the whole tools or tool elements directly from CAD data within a few hours or days. The paper represents an overview of the most important direct rapid tooling procedures.