When better manufacturing processes are developed for die and moldmaking, you can be sure that improvements will result from advances made primarily in three areas: tooling, machine tools, and programming or any combination thereof. To the metalworking observer, it almost looks like a game of leapfrog with breakthroughs in technology in one area driving or responding to advances in another area.

The stakes are high especially for the manufacturers of the myriad consumer and industrial products who can't afford to miss a window of opportunity in the market or fail to capture the essence of the latest trend in styling and design. After all, it isn't an accident that automobile headlamps are designed like teardrops or cats eyes with the most daring and delicate shapes--shapes that must be created in the hard tooling needed to produce them.

One would almost say that these styled parts are the sexiest aspect of consumer manufacturing and that the processes needed to produce them are rather mundane. Nothing could be further from the truth. There's more to die and moldmaking today than ever before. Machining depends on the timely and orderly handling of large data files by controls and software. Toolpath and machining routines must be created for high rates of metal removal or for finishing of everything from hardened steels to fragile graphite electrodes used in EDM machining.

The future of advanced production technology in the die and moldmaking industry outlined not too long ago by Dr Taylan Altan, director of the Engineering Research Center for Net Shape Manufacturing (ERC/ NSM) at The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, and his colleagues is here today. Competing technologies continue to vie with one another for dominance. High speed machining of hardened die and mold surfaces is a reality, allowing the production of excellent surface finishes with relatively little increase in required milling time.

The pressure to shorten leadtime to meet flexible and rapid introduction of products to market has dictated that product, process, and die/mold design are done concurrently. At the same time improvements in controls and software routines have been developed that are able to handle extremely large data files to virtually eliminate both manual and machine finishing operations in some applications.

Rapid prototyping techniques such as fused deposition modeling (FDM) are being studied for their ability to prepare physical models from 3D designs of discrete parts. At the Engineering Research Center, FDM is used for producing part models from ABS plastic or wax, for visualizing complex geometries generated in process modeling where material flow is simulated, and for rapid manufacturing of dies and molds for net shape manufacturing.

Key developments in software allow automatic optimization of feedrate to account for cutter path geometry. Other developments in monitoring milling force, the chip thickness, and the average cutting speed on the tool surface as a function of toolpath geometry are being investigated and perfected to further control feedrate and spindle speed. High speed milling machines dedicated to graphite electrode manufacturing are making further inroads, even in small shops.

If the future looks bright for machine tool builders who are focused on high speed machining of hardened steels, it looks equally promising for cutting tool manufacturers, and controls and software developers.