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Part of the award-winning Manufacturing Insights Video Series, this program shows three different methods of making injection molds using various rapid prototyping techniques.
The first example is epoxy tooling made from a stereolithography pattern that is used to mold 15 prototype parts in actual production material. The second example used the DTM process called RapidTool to make mold inserts capable of thousands of injection cycles. These RapidTool inserts were formed using powder metal in a Sinterstation. The powder metal inserts are infiltrated with copper to give the tool strength. The last example shows how the 3D Keltool process can be used to make mold inserts capable of being used as the final production tool for an injection molded part. This program also contains a demonstration of the PROMETAL machine that can make metal tooling directly from CAD data.