THE RAPID TOOLING IN THE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

 

Carmen Gabriela BĂCILĂ, Zoltan-Gabor BAKI-HARI

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Abstract: It is well known that nowadays, due to the diversification of human needs, the life-cycle of the products presents a diminishing tendency. Thus, the producers are compelled to launch new products on the market more and more often. And this means that the time of developing and making of the new products must be reduced, even drastically, in order to ensure the launching on the market before the competitors. However, the quality level has to be kept and framed in the ecological conditions. And all these at a minimum cost, in order to provide a maximum competitivity for the new product. This fact obliges the producers to make use of modern developing and making methods, which will allow the framing in these conditions.From the category of the methods that correspond to the above mentioned requests, we also mention the ones based on the Rapid X methods, such as the Rapid Prototyping (RP), the Rapid Tooling (RT), and the Rapid Manufacturing (RM).The Rapid Tooling is part of this category because it reduces the making time, especially by diminishing the time of the making tools necessary for the product realization. It also provides a checking of the product technological aspects and it permits the re-projection of the product from this point of view, allowing he rapid making of the possibly new necessary tools. Usually, through Rapid Tooling there can be obtained tools called “soft” – of modern conception – which resist only at small or middle batch series. While these tools are made, the “hard” tools can also be finished – the classical ones – which already allow big batch series.

 

Key words: rapid manufacturing, rapid prototyping, rapid tooling, rapid molding, product development, CAD-CAM-CAE.