PROTOTYPE AND BRIDGE TOOLING
REAL STEEL TOOLS DURING PROTOTYING.
Mantle-printed prototype tooling enables production-equivalent parts early in product development processes. Steel production-representative tooling allows for true functional prototyping, manufacturing validation, trials, and certification.
FUNCTIONAL PARTS
MANUFACTURING PROCESS
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
AND PRODUCTION
REAL FUNCTIONAL PARTS
Test confidently, knowing that even your most challenging materials – including PEEK, Acetal, Radel, heavily filled, and even metal – were made from production-representative tools.
TOOL STEEL FOR BRIDGE AND PRODUCTION VOLUMES
Production representative tooling
H13 tool steel for millions of cycles
Polish, texture, and repair
VALIDATE YOUR MANUFACTURING PROCESS
By using tool steel tooling during the development stage, manufacturers de-risk their production molding by testing and validating critical process parameters such as plastic shrink rate, cycle time, and cooling rate.
- Validate plastic shrink rate
- Define molding process parameters
- Learn cycle time and cooling rate
CASE STUDIES
FIRST PROTOTYPE LEAD TIME CUT BY 80% USING TOOL-STEEL MOLD FOR HIGH-TEMP PLASTIC PARTS
A global medical device manufacturer sought a solution to significantly reduce the time to prototype parts made with high-temperature plastic. Using Mantle, a cavity and core tool-steel inserts were printed in just over 2.5 days.
WESTEC PLASTICS PRODUCES H13 PROTOTYPE TOOLING FOR MEDICAL DEVICE COMPONENT IN 5 DAYS
Westec Plastics used their Mantle metal 3D printer to print a set of H13 tool steel inserts for Gracon Manufacturing. Gracon Manufacturing was implementing a design change on a plastic part already in production, so needed to get tooling as quickly as possible to validate the design change.
