The core of our discussion will focus on the significant sustainability and efficiency gains inherent to this process. By utilizing AM for tooling, we achieve substantial reductions in both material consumption, through lightweight and topology-optimized mold designs, and energy consumption, by slashing the carbon footprint associated with traditional metal tooling fabrication. Furthermore, these polymer AM molds enable drastically shorter lead times and lower costs for low- to medium-volume production, facilitating faster iteration and time-to-market.
Finally, we will briefly discuss our ongoing research into next-generation tooling, exploring the potential of Metal AM for high-performance applications, such as conformal cooling in injection molding.
This is a glimpse into the future of manufacturing optimization by empowering traditional CNC with AM.
Speaker: René Medel, Senior Digital Creation Engineer, framas Kunststofftechnik GmbH