Abstract
Rapid prototyping has made a substantial contribution to reducing product development time. Here we discuss rapid tooling, that is, rapid prototyping of production tools, especially injection molds. The rapidly prototyped tools are then used to produce final parts. As the market demands ever more rapid production of parts, at Georgia Tech we are developing a distributed design environment in which the various stakeholders in the product development process can contribute information and expertise. We present the overall vision for the design for manufacture portion of the Rapid Tooling TestBed. The design framework for Rapid Tooling TestBed is based on an attention-directing tool, the Decision Support Problem Technique, in which we postulate that design progress is measured by the types and nature of decisions about the product which are being made. Here we study two of these decisions which must be made simultaneously, the selection of the most feasible process and material combination for the development of an injection mold. This coupled decision is formulated with the attention directing tool, coupled selection-selection Decision Support Problems. Specifically, a we solve a decision problem to determine the most feasible process and material combination for the production of a simple rib to be produced using a rapidly prototyped injection mold. The resulting mold must be able to withstand the forces, stresses and strains imposed on it in the injection molding process. The emphasis of this paper in on the methods rather than on the results, per se.
