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Industry White Papers

Short Run Tooling Requirements

Advances in rapid tooling methods are creating opportunities for product designers and die casters to create cost-effective dies from a variety of materials using a variety of processes for low volume production runs. These methods are proving valuable in many situations. These include production of parts for military, aerospace and medical applications where demand may range from 1,000 to 10,000 pieces.

Two requirements affect the selection of short run tooling. The first requirement is a need for rapid tooling. This allows for tools to be made quickly. Short lead times are clearly desired if small quantities of production parts are needed, or an interim source of products is needed while longer run tooling is completed. The second factor is the high cost of premium tooling can be a deterrent by offering larger capacity than needed. This creates a situation where die casting may be the ideal process for manufacturing the component, but since hundreds of thousands of parts are not required it is rejected as a viable and cost effective process. By utilizing different die materials the cost of the die is reduced allowing for short production runs. In addition this allows the process to be optimized for future longer runs.

The current state of the art satisfies both of these requirements. Certain die materials have reduced the breakeven point of a die insert to 100-1000 shots from tens of thousands of shots. Rapid tooling methods exist that when coupled with 3D modeling has reduced the tooling lead time to 3-4 weeks. By combining these elements die casting, a traditionally inflexible process, can be flexible for shorter runs.

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