Composite Tooling Design

Quality tooling is a fundamental requirement for the manufacture of composite parts. This is due to the fact that every step in the composite part manufacturing process must be tightly controlled to ensure superior material properties and predictable performance in the final product.

This  program, part of the Fundamentals of Tool Design Video Series, explores the composite materials used for tooling and tooling design.

The Tooling Materials segment details the wide variety of materials used to create composite tooling, including:

• glass reinforced polyester/vinyl-ester laminated tooling
• carbon/glass fiber reinforced epoxy/bismaleimide laminated tooling
• invar
• invar coated carbon fiber reinforced tooling
• steel

The Tooling Design segment highlights mold, die, and mandrel tooling design for a variety of composite processes:

• layup
• spray up
• vacuum infusion
• vacuum assisted resin transfer molding
• resin transfer molding
• pultrusion
• and more

Support tools are also featured, including: ply and core kit-cutting templates, ply and core locator templates, trim fixtures, drill jigs and fixtures, and tooling supports.