IN T. J. PROD . RES.

1997,

VOL .

35,

N O.

5, 13491357

Principles of design for laminated tooling

P. M. DICK ENS
The emergence of rapid prototyping over the last 78 years has had a revolutionary e ect in many companies undertaking new product design. Currently, the emphasis has moved from rapid prototyping to rapid tooling. U se of laminated tooling for sheet metal working has already been proved and some work has also been undertaken to build laminated tooling for mouldin g plastics. Laminated tooling is relatively rare at the moment and as more tools are built using this technique the bene ts and limitations will become more clear.

1.

Background The emergence of rapid prototyping over the last 78 years has had a revolutionary e ect in many companies undertaking new product design (H inzmann 1995). All these techniques manufacture models by adding thin layers of materia l on top of each other, rather than using traditional techniques of materia l removal or materia l forming (D ickens 1995). Companies are now investigating how this additive layer technique can be used further down the development route for the production of tooling or even production parts (Tromans and Wimpenny 1995). Currently, the emphasis has moved from rapid prototyping to rapid tooling. It has been recognized that there are even greater potential cost and time savings in the tooling area. A prototype may cost a few thousand pounds and take a few weeks to manufacture. However, a tool will often cost ten or a hundred times as much and may take ten times as long to make. F or any new product, the manufacture of prototype or production tooling is de nitely on the critical path. If companies can make similar cost and savings for tooling as they have already made for prototypes, then the e ect will be enormous. 2. Horizontal and vertical clamping Tools has been manufactured for some time by adding layers of sheet steel and then xing them together (Yokoi et al. 1984, Vouzelaud and Bagchi 1992). Professor Nakagawa at the University of Tokyo has made sheet metal stamping and forming tools by stacking the sheet pro les horizontally (F ig. 1). One Japanese company regularly manufactures metal forming tools this way and so far has made 10 000 tools (Nakagawa 1995). The laminations can be bolted together or clamped within a frame. This technique works well for blanking tools (Schreiber and Clyens 1993) but can be limiting for forming tools. It can be very di cult to x islands within a tool cavity without producing witness marks on products (F ig. 2). In this situation it is more normal to x sheets with rivets. Other workers (Glozer and Brevick 1992, Walczyk and Hardt 1994) have stacked sheets vertically. It is often much easier to then clamp them together, particular ly for
R eceived January 1996. D epartment of M anufacturing Engineering & Operations M anagement, U niversity of N ottingham, U niversity Park, N ottingham N G 7 2R D , U K . Tel. (0115) 9514063; F ax (0115) 9514000.
0020 7543/97 $12.00 1997 Taylor & Francis Ltd.

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F igure 1.

Laminated tooling for sheet metal blanking.

F igure 2.

F ixing of sheets with rivets around the periphery and on islands.

F igure 3.

Clamping of vertical sheets.

cavities (F ig. 3). The clamping arrangement may be internal as shown in F ig. 3 or external with a frame. The distance between tie rods depends on the size of the tool, but for medium size tools of about 1 m square a typical distance is 50 mm. This distance will depend also on the geometry of the tool. The clamping arrangements shown in F igs 2 and 3 are classed as Level 1. It may be necessary to use a second-level clamping system where a

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F igure 4.

Third-level clamping for tall protrusions.

F igure 5.

Comparison of pro le with

4 and

1 thickness sheets.

F igure 6.

F ive-axis cut pro les with

4 thickness sheets.

group of sheets need assembling as a unit. This may be required where design changes are anticipated and would allow a replacemen t section without separating all the sheets. A third-level clamping system may be required for clamping sheets that have a tall protrusion (F ig. 4) or where shut-o faces are poorly supported. 3. Cavity size versus sheet thickness One main problem of designing a laminated tool is choosing the sheet thickness. Generally, thin sheets are required for small cavities. This is because the stair stepping e ect of layered sheets is much more obvious on surfaces with small radii and thick sheets (Fig. 5). It is possible to use ve-axis pro le cutting to eliminat e some stair stepping, but there is a limit to the angle of cut possible (F ig. 6). It is not always necessary to remove the stair steps. F or example, vacuum forming of sheet does not

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transfer all the detail from the tool to the part. Similarly, in producing hidden parts, such as automotive under-the-bonnet components, it may not be necessary to have a good nish. The thickness tolerance of sheets, as stated by rolling mills, is proportionally very large ( 0. 1 mm for 1 mm thick sheet). The cumulative e ect of this on a tool with 1000 sheets could obviously be very large. In practice the actual tolerance is very much smaller. It is more sensible to measure the sheet thickness variation before the CAD slicing is undertaken. The easiest solution is to slice the tool with the minimum sheet thickness. This will then produce slightly more sheets than required. When the tool is then assembled, it is necessary to simply leave out some sheets. 4. Sheet pro le production The main technique for producing the sheet pro les is laser cutting, which can be used for most materials and is reasonably fast. There may be a problem with edge quality when using lasers due to oxidation and burring or because of the heat-a ected zone. In this situation it may be necessary to use water jet or abrasive water jet cutting. These are slower than using a laser and usually more expensive. Each pro le must have a unique identi cation number. This can become di cult when large tools with several thousand sheets are involved. The numbering system should be logical so that one end of the tool begins with pro le 1 and continues sequentially. Usually, each pro le is sent to the laser cutter as a separate dxf. le. 5. Conformable cooling channels A major bene t of using laminated tooling is the possibility of having much more complicated cooling channels. In conventional tooling, the cooling channels are usually drilled in a straight line. However, the cavity may be highly complex and curved. In this situation some parts of the cooling system may be much further away from the cavity than other parts. It is possible to have slightly more complicated cooling systems where cooling pipes are cast into aluminium tools. However, these are still limited by the minimum bend radius of the pipework and their inability to follow the contours of the cavity. An example of this is shown in F ig. 7. With conformable cooling channels (Fig. 8) it is possible to have variable cooling in di erent parts of the tool. This could give variable mechanica l properties and could also be used to control

F igure 7.

Conventional machined cooling channels.

F igure 8.

Conformable cooling channels.

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solidi cation directions. Conventional cooling channels are normally of a round cross-section. With conformable cooling channels in laminated tooling the channels can be of any cross-section. It is also possible to change the cross-section along the length of the channel. However, cooling channels in laminated tooling present a problem for watertight sealing. It is di cult to clamp sheets together so that no leaks occur. Therefore, it is necessary to either seal the internal cooling channels or the outside surfaces of the tool. Internal channels can be sealed with various resins but this reduces their thermal conductivity. The outside of steel tools may be sealed with a solder paste or brazing operation but this then provides a problem if the tool needs to be disassembled. It is possible to use high-temperat ure adhesives between each sheet, but again this can cause problems if disassembly of the tool is required. 6. Avoiding distortion in laminated tooling Laminated tooling needs to be designed carefully otherwise distortion can be a serious problem. The individual sheets form a block which is very similar to a pack of cards. They can therefore twist in several directions unless restrained. There are various forms of distortion as follows: 6.1. V ertical distortion Vertical distortion is caused by uneven tightening and lack of rigidity of clamping rods. The distortion shown in F ig. 9 is caused by overtightening of the top set of rods. 6.2. Horizontal distortion H orizontal distortion (shown in F ig. 10) is due to too much play between the tie rods and the individual sheets and/or alignment during assembly. 6.3. T wist Twist (shown in F ig. 11) is due to incorrect alignment during assembly and uneven tightening of tie rods.

F igure 9.

Vertical distortion.

F igure 10.

Horizontal distortion.

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Figure 11.

Twist.

F igure 12.

R egistration grooves to eliminate distortion.

F igure 13.

Angled and at shut-o faces.

The various types of distortion may be reduced or eliminated with registration grooves as shown in F ig. 12. These should run the length of the tool along the slicing direction on three sides and may be dovetailed or simply rectangular . 7. Design of shut-ofaces The shut-o faces are particular ly important in tooling as it is these that constrain the part being produced. They are the areas where the two halves of the tool touch. It is important to design them so that they are not liable to damage or cause other problems in the operation of the tool. A problem that can occur is the use of sharpedged shut-o faces as in Fig. 13. The outside sheets in this situation can easily be bent and damaged. Ideally the shut-o faces should be at.

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F igure 14.

U nsupported shut-o face.

F igure 15.

Baseplate for locating tool.

Another problem that may occur is shown in Fig. 14. This is where shut-o faces occur above a cooling manifold. In this situation the primary clamping system may not rigidly hold the pro les together and vertical movement of the sheets can occur. This will mean that the shut-o faces are not pressed against each other with su cient pressure to seal the cavity. 8. General alignment and location features A substantial baseplate should be used to clamp the tool to the press (Fig. 15). The tool should be bolted to the base plate with the aid of solid threaded inserts. Helicoil inserts should be avoided as they will become dislodged more easily if the sheets are loosened. It is obviously possible to use a base plate with a machined groove for a registration bar. The pins and bushes to align the two halves of the tool need to be rigid and there are several methods that can be used to accomplish this. The simplest technique is to drill holes into the mating faces of the tool to locate the pins and dowels. An alternative is to use solid inserts which slot into place when the sheets are

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F igure 16.

Solid insert for tall protrusions.

being assembled. These solid inserts can then be drilled to accept pins and bushes. More detailed use of inserts is given in the following section. 9. Use of solid inserts There may be other situations where it is vital to use solid inserts: (1) When there are tall protrusions it may be di cult to x some sheets together (see Fig. 16). (2) Some features may be prone to damage and so replaceable inserts could extend the life of the tool. (3) Inserts are used in conventional tooling where the same part is made for di erent customers. In this situation the insert could simply have a di erent logo or part name. (4) Inserts are also used where regular design changes are anticipated. The insert should be designed as an integral part of the tool and located accurately and rigidly. 10. Model slicing techniques The techniques of horizontal and vertical clamping were discussed earlier and this largely relates to the direction of slicing. However, it is important to consider the slicing direction when considering the surface roughness of the cavity. The surface roughness of the assembled sheets is largely dependent on the orientation of the cavity surface to the slicing direction. As the cavity orientation approaches that of the slicing direction then the stair stepping e ect of building parts by layers becomes more pronounced. It may be necessary to design a tool with parts being sliced in di erent directions (F ig. 17). The tool would then resemble a complex wire cut tool where parts are assembled from di erent directions. However, it may then become more di cult to match cooling channels with di erent sections of a tool. 11. Conclusions U se of laminated tooling for sheet metal working has already been proved and some work has also been undertaken to build laminated tooling for moulding plastics. This needs further investigation to determine the economic and technical bene ts. There is also the possibility of using laminated tooling in other application s such as

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F igure 17.

Slicing options.

die casting and forging. Laminated tooling is relatively rare at the moment and as more tools are built using this technique, the bene ts and limitation s will become more clear . References
D ICKENS, P. M ., 1995, R esearch developments in rapid prototyping. Proceedings of the Institution of M echanical Engineers, Part B: Journal of Engineering M anufacture, 209, 261266. G LOZER , G . R . and BR EVICK, J. R ., 1992, Laminate tooling for injection moulding. Proceedings of the Institution of M echanical Engineers, Part B: Journal of Engineering M anufacture, 207, 915. H IN ZM AN N, B., 1995, Does R P make sense for industrial design. Six th International Conference on Rapid Prototyping, June 47, 1995, edited by R. P. Chartfo and A. J. Lightman (Sponsored by The R apid Prototype D evelopment Laboratory, The M anagement D evelopment Centre, The U niversity of D ayton), pp. 195200. N AK AGAWA, T., 1995, R apid prototyping techniques in Japan. Proceedings of the 4th European Conference on R apid Prototyping, 45 October 1995, Paris, F rance (Andresy, F rance: R emark S.A.). SCHREIBER , M . P. and C LYENS, S., 1993, Blanking tools manufactured by laminated laser cut steel sheets. Proceedings of the 2nd European Conference on R apid Prototyping and M anufacturing, N ottingham, 1516 July 1993, edited by P. M . Dickens (N ottingham: U niversity of N ottingham), pp. 167176. T R OM ANS, G . and W IM PEN NY, D ., 1995, Rapid manufacturing. Proceedings of the 4th European Conference on R apid Prototyping and M anufacturing, Belgirate, Italy, 13 15 June 1995, edited by P. M . D ickens (N ottingham: U niversity of N ottingham), pp. 2740. VOU ZELAU D, F. A. and BAG CHI, A., 1992, Adaptive laminated machining for prototyping of dies and molds. Proceedings of S olid Freeform Fabrication Symposium , Austin, Texas, 35 August 1992, edited by H. L. M arcus, J. J. Beaman, J. W. Barlow, D . L. Bourell and R . H . Crawford (Austin, TX: U niversity of Texas at Austin), pp. 291300. W ALCYZK , D . F. and H AR D T, D . E., 1994, A new rapid cooling method for sheet metal forming dies. Fifth International Conference on R apid Prototyping, June 1215 1994, edited by R . P. Charto , A. J. Lightman and J. A. Schenk (Sponsored by The Rapid Prototype D evelopment Laboratory, The M anagement D evelopment Centre, The University of D ayton), pp. 275289. Y OK OI, H ., SUZU K I, T., SU ZUK I, K . and N AKAG AWA, T., 1984, M anufacturing of blanking tool and its die-set by laminating steel sheet. Proceedings of the 12th N orth A merican M etalworking R esearch Conference, H oughton, M I, USA, 30 M ay1 June 1984, Journal of M anufacturing Engineering T ransactions. pp. 372378.