The Rise of Toolingless Production
As we near the close of the first decade of the 21st century, design engineers have myriad manufacturing options from which to choose to produce their ideas, with more options becoming available regularly. Designer engineers today are free from the constraints once imposed by 2D design and tooling-intense manufacturing processes, thanks to the widespread use of solid modeling-to-design technologies. Toolingless manufacturing processes are abundant, fast, relatively accurate, and forgiving with regards to design limitations. Forward-thinking companies have taken the action to manufacture production parts using toolingless manufacturing processes, and to inspect these parts using digital scanning methods. Geometries which are difficult and thus expensive to tool are prime candidates for toolingless production, as toolingless manufacturing processes continue to evolve into stable, accurate, repeatable, reliable processes.
Today’s design engineers have many toolingless manufacturing options compared with the options available in the mid 1980’s, prior to the mainstream use of solid modeling systems and the advent of additive prototyping systems. Designers are no longer beholden to the design and manufacturing limitations which suppressed the imagination prior to 3D CAD and digital manufacturing. They enjoy the freedom to throw curves and blends which defy description on a 2D drawing, making manufacturing difficult using traditional methods which rely on these 2D relics.
Additive prototyping systems and CNC machines follow toolpaths generated using 3D CAD models, unconcerned as to the shape of the geometry. Today’s 2D drawings are a necessary evil (to those who have not abandoned them), which contain few key characteristics for inspection purposes, and notes stating that the, “Solid model should be considered master. For any undescribed dimensions refer to the 3D Model.” Inspecting these free-form features is all but impossible using traditional methods; digital scanning processes will soon replace the CMM, which dominates space in the inspection department.
Prototyping multiple design iterations in parallel is now feasible with toolingless prototyping and manufacturing processes which produce parts in plastic or metal in a matter of days rather than weeks, with little or no capital tooling investment. Fast prototype hardware procurement allows design engineers to make decisions based on tangible fact rather than assumptions. Once the “design intent” solid model is complete, parts begin to ship in as little as days from those who have adopted a “speed strategy” and understand that the world is their competition and that those who make quality parts quickly and for a reasonable price will win the business over and over and over again.
Design engineers must constantly consider trade-offs during the design cycle, the continual process of evaluating benefits and side effects. Toolingless manufacturing processes promise no shortage in manufacturing process comparisons. Investment castings from direct or indirect RP patterns, toolingless sand cores and molds, additive direct metal, CNC hog outs from solid stock, water jet cutting, and 3D laser cutting are all viable processes which afford design engineers many manufacturing options to consider. The Clinkenbeard® Process we’ve developed has the unique capability to modify sand cores made using qualified production foundry tooling, to incorporate critical engineering changes to production parts in the eleventh hour.
Although toolingless manufacturing of production parts is occurring in a variety of industries, it has not yet been adopted wide scale. Good candi-
dates for toolingless production parts currently include geometries which are difficult to tool, custom products, and parts which do not have demanding cosmetic and dimensional requirements. Custom made products such as medical implants are a perfect fit. Hurdles to using toolingless parts for production include (depending upon the process): inadequate surface finish, lack of dimensional accuracy, lack of material choices, small equipment working envelope, post processing, and cost.
Toolingless production is perceived as being expensive, although engineering changes to production tooling are not always included when comparing conventional to toolingless options due to lack of visibility. OEMs have explored toolingless production and have gone so far as to write quality specifications which govern the process. Toolingless manufacturing technologies support, by nature, continuous improvement, making change implementation faster, less expensive, and less laborious from a manufacturing standpoint.
Widespread use of solid modeling in product design has fueled the development and use of many toolingless digital manufacturing processes. These relatively new design and manufacturing processes remove many of the constraints once imposed on the designer by the limited capacity of 2D drawings and conventional “tooling intense” manufacturing processes. Toolingless manufacturing processes afford the designer the option to prototype and test multiple designs in parallel to develop the best solution to the problem, with the confidence to make decisions based on tangible fact rather than assumptions (this was not cost- or time-feasible using conventional processes).
Even though there are both technical and perceptual challenges, I believe toolingless manufacturing processes will evolve into repeatable, reliable processes which will become the means by which OEMs produce a wide variety of production parts.
