Vacuum Casting or Rapid Tooling? from freeamfva's blog

Vacuum Casting or Rapid Tooling?

Rapid tooling is a great option to help get your product to market faster but it is not always the best option to line up with your ultimate project goals.Get more news about Vacuum Casting Rapid Prototypes,you can vist our website!

Final production parts for this project would be injection molding. So it was important to choose a rapid manufacturing method that gave useful feedback on how final production parts would present (form, fit, function, look, feel…).

Vacuum casting is a good mimic of injection molded parts and delivered tolerances that matched the needs off this project. Vacuum casting simply ticked all the boxes for this particular project…cost, time line, quality.

We have many projects that go this way…vacuum casting first, then rapid injection molding, then production injection molding.Vacuum Casting is used to produce small numbers of polyurethane prototype parts with mechanical properties similar to injection moulded polymers. As the name suggests, a vacuum is used to push the material into the tool.

We can produce parts to excellent levels of detail and keep tooling concessions to the absolute minimum.We have a suite of Vacuum Casting chambers and ovens, which afford great flexibility in turning around tools quickly.

These systems feature electronic differential pressure systems and automatic silicone de-gassing. Our specialist process curing ovens ensure excellent surface quality with a minimal scrap rate.The Vacuum Casting process is typically used to produce small numbers (usually up to 20) of polyurethane prototype parts.

It is a slightly slower process than SLA alone because of the additional steps involved in the process, some of which are manually intensive. The time to manufacture depends on the desired characteristics of the part, with size being a key factor as this affects the curing time of the material.

Parts are made from a master pattern, which is made using an SLA 3D Print. The master pattern will be finished in the desired surface finish of the final part; This can be a Gloss, Matt or Satin finish. A texture can also be added if desired. The mould is made from silicone rubber, and the casting made by pouring resin into the mould in a vacuum chamber.