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| Cambridge production process woos world |
| Friday, 02 November 2007 | |
 Getting ready to surface: New technology from Surface Generation Ltd allows injection moulded components to be made without any machining of mould tools Using a specially developed variant of the company’s patented Subtractive Pin Tooling (SPTTM) process, arrays of precision pins are adjusted to create the front face of the tool, and with little or no machining, are used to produce final specification injection moulded components. After use the array can simply be reformatted for the next job, allowing one mould tool to produce an entire suite of parts within a matter of days. This approach means that where a conventional ‘tool set’ for a new automotive engine compartment has previously taken months and cost hundreds of thousands of pounds to produce, it now takes a matter of weeks – boosting sales and profitability. Surface Generation chief executive, Ben Halford, said: ‘Manufacturers are limited by the tool making processes at the heart of their businesses which are unsuited to the dynamics of modern product life cycles. “By removing these limits, Surface Generation’s SPTTM technology allows the rapid iteration of designs during R & D, giving the opportunity to sell highly optimised and ultimately customised products at a premium. “By keeping the gaps between the pins below 15 microns no polymer ‘flashes’ into the joins. These spaces gives the additional benefit of allowing the tool to vent excess air which means smaller, more efficient moulding machines can be used. “With further development, including the introduction of conformal heating & cooling, these benefits should reduce cycle times by up to 25 per cent.” |
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