WEBINAR: Accelerating Innovation with Rapid Prototype Molding

This insightful webinar explores Rapid Prototype Molding (RPM), a cutting-edge solution for producing fast, cost-effective high-performance thermoplastic injection molded prototypes. RPM seamlessly integrates advanced 3D printing technologies with the precision of injection molding, offering unparalleled speed, affordability, and quality in prototype development.

In this session, we explore the intricacies of RPM, a process where negative cavities are rapidly 3D printed using dissolvable resins, followed by the injection of high performance materials to yield functional prototypes, enabling you to test before you invest. Whether you're a seasoned engineer, a product designer, or a curious innovator, this webinar offers invaluable insights into leveraging RPM to expedite your prototyping endeavors, accelerate product development cycles, and drive exciting innovation. 

Webinar Transcript:

Jeremy Smith:
Alright, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. We are. Gonna let a few other people join in as we get going, but we might as well get started now. Thank you for those of you who attended our last webinar and join us again for Episode 2, where Clifford Green will join us to talk accelerating innovation with rapid prototype molding. A few housekeeping items before we get started into the fun this webinar is being recorded and will be sent out to you, following today's event. And any questions that you may have you can enter it into the chat box, and we will address those during the QA. Session at the end of the event. So to introduce our panelists today myself. Hello! I'm Jeremy Smith. I'm the business development manager with Alpine advanced materials. I've been working here for about 3 years now. And I was around when we started this rapid prototype molding process. So I've been able to see what it's been able to and what how it enables the market to accelerate their innovative designs with prototyping for advanced materials and joining me today is Clifford Green, our resident expert, and I'll let him introduce himself.

Clifford Green:
Hello! I'm Cliff Green. I've also been at Alpine advance materials for 3 years. And I specifically remember the day when the 3D printer showed up, and the demoling station arrived here at Alpine. So that was a very special day.

Jeremy Smith:
You were a young man then.

Clifford Green:
Yeah, no, very much. So.

Jeremy Smith:
Alright. So before we get into the main topic, I wanna just kinda introduce who Alpine is for those of you who are not aware. We are a full service design and manufacturing company, focused on metallic and non metallic conversion with advanced materials. Our primary material is a unique thermoplastic material called HX5, which has the strength of 6000 series aluminum at half the weight. So it's an excellent candidate for metallic to non metallic conversions. However, we do work in a number of advanced filled thermoplastic materials, and our main manufacturing process is injection molding. We do have services for design design analytics from multiple analysis, finite element analysis. We have production capabilities. We also have testing capabilities as well. So we are a flexible company that can do any part of this process. But our expertise is doing turnkey solutions from our conception through prototyping to full rate production. And I've mentioned that our primary mode of manufacturing is injection molding with advanced materials, and a big part of the talk is gonna today is gonna be around prototyping for injection molding.

But first I want to talk about injection molding as a whole, just to kind of give an overview of the manufacturing process that we use, and it's benefits and considerations. When, evaluating, manufacturing. The main advantages of injection molding are its scalability, and it's repeatability. So what you do is you create a steel tool with a cavity that you would then inject mobile material into to fill that space, and it allows you to get a repeatable part out every single time in a cycle time of 45 to 2 min, depending on size of part. No manufacturing method around has the capability to produce parts with that complex geometry that quickly, you see, kind of a gradient on the right of the competitive manufacturing processes, those being machining from stock or additive manufacturing, and you can see, the rate is without comparison. Injection. Molding can produce thousands of parts per day very, very quickly and highly repeatable as well. The machine and additive have benefits at lower rates, but with high rates production nothing can meet injection, molding capabilities when you are considering injection, molding the things you need to evaluate are the non recurring cost and the lead time associated with building that tool that will then become your high repeatable avenue that can take anywhere from 2 to 4 weeks for a very simple prototype tool all the way up to 6 to 16 weeks for a full steel production tool. And when you consider the prototyping avenue of that, that's where this rapid prototype molding process really gives you an advantage of a part in hand. In short weeks versus potentially several months to get a part in hand. So this prototyping process that we're gonna detail today is geared towards getting you a high fidelity functional prototype before you go out and produce that steel tool that then will become your highway production avenue.

I wanna talk just for a moment about a general product development cycle. You see here the the typical steps broken down into different buckets. For what product development looks like, you're gonna start with a concept. You design a concept, you do some theoretical analysis on your design, based on the function of any given part and then the next step is to really build a test. Build a prototype that you can make sure works as intended, and, if necessary, iterate upon that design, repeat the step of testing and continue that cycle until you have your design locked into a functional repeatable design. Once you've done that, you can begin your manufacturing ramp and produce first articles that can be inspected and approved before you run to full-rate, consistent manufacturing.

I wanna take one of these steps out and focus on it. And that's gonna be prototyping. So to get a rapid prototype cycle of build, test iterate, build, test iterate. You wanna be able to build quickly. And, as I mentioned, with injection. Molding to produce a steel tool could take months to get that part in hand. What others do to produce prototypes, to cut that time down. They use the methods that you see on the right. The traditional methods are machining, whether it's from metal stock or thermal plastic build stock. You can 3D. Print your part. Or you can do a prototype metal tooling that allows you to build a tool and get some higher volume out of that tool once it's built. However, it's not going to be a long, lasting tool, and it's typically a little bit quicker to build. However, it does have some constraints upon it when you get it, though. And this chart here is, a lot of different colors thrown at what is a comparative assessment of each of those methods. So the 2 on the left are machining from stock, whether it's metal stock or thermoplastic, build it. And in a typical stoplight scale, the green is, gonna be great. Advantageous. Yellow is gonna be somewhat medium when compared to its other parties here. And red, it means that it's not advantageous that you are suffering from that process for that valley.

So when you see, when you consider machining from stock whether it's metal or thermoplastic billet, the cost and lead time is about a medium. You're going to have some setup costs associated with building fixtures for your machining, and then a learning curve for the machinists to produce the part, especially with a complex geometry. And your lead time is in that medium range as well it could take. If you have a machine in shop, and you have stock ready to go. It could take a few days if you are outsourcing your material by, or if you are outsourcing your machine work. It could take 2 weeks, 4 weeks, whatever the backlog of that given vendor is. And the last value that is medium for these 2 is the iteration on it. You are allowed to kind of iterate your design free form when you're machining. But if you need to create new fixtures order, new stock, etc, that lead time can kind of add to your iterative process, making this a medium value with iteration.

The 2 values. That kind of differ between metal stock and thermoplastic billets are shrink and weight. So with metal stock, you're gonna get the full performance of that metal out of a bill. However, you're gonna have the same weight as metal out of your billet and again calling back to what our core competency is that's metallic to non metallic conversion. Especially in aerospace and defense. It's very important to maintain strength and reduce weight. You can increase the range of your vehicle. You can increase the capacity of your vehicle. There's a number of different things that wait can be done that is very beneficial to an operator. When you're considering machine from thermoplastic billet you can get great weight savings. You'll have a very sound weight loss part. However, the mechanical performance of thermal plastic billets is typically about 50%, that of the injection molded material. That same resin when injection molded is gonna be about twice as strong as that of a billet. So it's less of a functional prototype, but more of a weight representative prototype.

Jeremy Smith:
One column to the right is 3D. Printing, which does have the most green in it, and if you're familiar, 3D. Printing is very popular, and it is very advantageous for specific things. It is a cheap avenue. It can be very quick. If you have a 3D printer in house, you can print your part in potentially an hour. It's gonna give you the weight savings of the advanced material.

Jeremy Smith:
and it's very iterative. You're not tied to fixtures. You can print multiple parts as long as it takes you to print. You could do multiple iterations in one day. With this process, which is very advantageous.

Jeremy Smith:
however, where 3D printing suffers is the same with thermoplastic billing. When you're using advanced materials like fiber filled thermoplastics. The strength of a 3D. Printed part is again going to be half or less that of that same material when injection molded.

Jeremy Smith:
And that's because with those fiber filled reinforced materials, you won't get fiber, alignment, and cohesion across layers the same way that you would in a injection, molded scenario. So if you consider laying down

Jeremy Smith:
line by line, those specific lines will have carbon, fiber, alignment, or glass fiber alignment within them, however, layer or layer, you're relying on the bond strength of the resin system and the given 3 printing process. So while this is a great avenue for form and fit prototypes at a high rate and quick iteration process. It does not give you the strength to actually go out and physically test those against the requirements of a given parl.

Jeremy Smith:
The last column on the right is a longstanding option for producing prototypes before producing a steel tool, and that's prototype metal tooling. You can use softer metals like aluminum or untreated steel, which is going to be give you the same, you know, essentially strength of injection molded part. However, they're not going to last for many shots. You could get potentially 20 to 50,

Jeremy Smith:
depending on the material that you're using, comparing to a full, hard and steel production tool, where you can get hundreds of thousands and not consider where on the tool.

Jeremy Smith:
So from a comparative standpoint, it is going to be the costliest method that you see in front of you here. It is going to have a lead time associated with it of 2, 4, 6 weeks, depending on the size and complexity of your part, and it's not iterative at all to change your design more than just a few features, you'll need to create a new tool, which it then puts you back into a higher cost and a considerable lead time as well, allowing or not allowing you to iterate quickly.

Jeremy Smith:
It does allow you, however, to use advanced materials with their optimal strength and their comparative weight for your production part. So if you really need strength and weight out of a part, and you want to produce 20 to 50 parts prototype tooling, metal tooling might be an option for you.

Jeremy Smith:
However, what we've done is tried to fit in a method that compares the 3D printing speed and iteration to the actual performance of injection, molding, and thus our rapid prototype molding process was born. It is a low cost option. It is a rapid turnption. It's strength, optional, optimal, and it's weight optimal.

Jeremy Smith:
The diagram on the right kind of breaks down the process when it goes into the injection. Molded tool. So you will need a steel cavity or an injection molded teak machine that can accept a 3D printed tool.

Jeremy Smith:
and as we move to the right you'll see the iterations of a 3D. Printed resin tool, the first on the far left. It looks like A, a large C channel is just the space look like we're minimizing the reusable. Or we're sorry minimizing the usability of the 3D printed resin by reducing the space of what will become eventually dissolves.

Jeremy Smith:
As you move to the right, you see a small tool with some fasteners in it. That is the single use portion of this process. That resin will be chemically demoled from part. So for each part that you produce. You have to burn that single tool

Jeremy Smith:
one step to the right shows what it looks like when we inject our material into that tool. We dissolve that process or that. That tool resin away, and a chemical process. And then finally, you'll do some finish machining to remove your screws, vents, etc. So this is kind of an overview of the process that we use for fast function prototypes. And

Jeremy Smith:
from here I'm actually gonna let Clifforden, our expert, who does this every day, walk us through what free form injection molding is, and how Rpm bookends the free form injection process.

Clifford Green:
Yeah, thank you. So we have adapted the next X small process what they call confirm rejection molding. We basically bookend it it with the Alpine rpm process. We do a full Dfm, using moldex

Clifford Green:
to simulate. How these materials will flow in these 3 print materials this give us an idea of shot size pressures. And it gives us a lot of insight on

Clifford Green:
how are these going to fill? So before we even start the 3D printer, we have a basic understanding of what we're gonna get coming out of these molds.

Clifford Green:
From there, you know you design print. You wash the 3D print you cure, and then you inject, and then you chemically mold

Clifford Green:
with the Alpine rpm process, though, is we have the abilities to work with our network of partners who can do machining Helico coils. And with Hx. 5, particularly we can use a whole bunch of different codings. Sarah Co. We can power code, and we can meowize our parts.

Clifford Green:
so as a strategic partner. Alpine can do all this

Clifford Green:
for your parts, and really give you a finished part that is very close to what would come out of a steel tool.

Jeremy Smith:
Clifford. How does the mult flow analysis process change when considering the the prototype tool versus a production tool.

Clifford Green:
Yeah. Yeah. So lot of these high temp materials. Need a heated tool

Clifford Green:
with moldex. You just put in 90°F. Room temp

Clifford Green:
it changes the flow characteristics greatly. The material does cool much, much quicker. For Hx. 5. For example, the mold temp should be around 325°F. So coming from 90, that's a huge difference.

Clifford Green:
So your pressures are, gonna be a little bit higher. Your milk fronts are gonna be colder. Your well lines are going to be more pronounced.

Clifford Green:
and this just kind of gives us insight on. Do we make the gate and runner bigger? Do we? Speed up the fill time?

Clifford Green:
venting so with steel tools you have a parting line where you can vent out the error will, with the free form, injection willing process you need air tunnels at the end of flow. And just using that to figure out where are your end of flow areas and putting in these tunnels is,

Clifford Green:
very useful to making sure that you get good parts.

Jeremy Smith:
Have I mentioned yet that Clifford is our expert

Jeremy Smith:
alright. So moving on, Clifford, tell us about the timeline comparison between the 2 processes.

Clifford Green:
Yeah. So

Clifford Green:
with, conventional steel tooling.

Clifford Green:
you know, you have a a very long process. Because of acquiring all the materials needed to create a steel tool.

Clifford Green:
And the fact is is that you know you are machining steel

Clifford Green:
with free form injection molding you're using resin that's in a bottle in a 3D printer and you can just start creating on a bill plane. So your speed and cost. Do go down considerably.

Clifford Green:
You know. Conentionally, you know. A 12 week steel tool is, you know, around the hmm general time with with us, and with these prefer injection bullying tools. We can do them easily. Within a week.

Jeremy Smith:
Wow, that is a big step. Big difference.

Jeremy Smith:
Here's kind of a look at the timeline in more graphical format and show you what this process can do for you compared to just running to your production tool first.

Jeremy Smith:
So the top line with the blue bars is a schedule of a typical production tool for injection, molding, and the part design and tool design on this is is honestly a little bit compressed. This is understanding, or this is knowing that you have your part design nearly dialed in, and it's not a majorly complex tool. This can expand quite considerably if your tool is large and highly complex

Jeremy Smith:
but you say you take one month to design your part in tool, and then it's gonna take you one to 2 weeks. Your tool is, gonna take one to 2 weeks to

Jeremy Smith:
acquire those materials and have them prep for fabrication, and then fabrication couldn't take 4, 5, 6, 8 weeks to produce your tool before you get to go in, and what we call validate the tool that'll be your first time shooting mold material into the tool, pulling it out and see if it conforms to the original drawings.

Jeremy Smith:
This process typically does not produce a perfect conforming part. On the first try. There will be minor features that you need to go back in and retool. So, receiving fai conforming parts in 12 weeks, as indicated here, is assuming that everything goes smoothly, and you have, a great design from the get go, which can happen absolutely. And there are timelines that are shorter than this. However, what we're kind of

Jeremy Smith:
highlighting here is

Jeremy Smith:
Prep has described in the bottom half. So when we go to part design.

Jeremy Smith:
you're still designing your part, but it's a much quicker process. Your tool design is also much quicker, too, because you're essentially taking that part, creating a negative cavity out of a block and shipping that over to your printer. The print time can take a few hours depending on how many tools you'd like to put into the bed. It could take a few more than more than few hours. If you have a large tool or multiple tools in there, and it'll also depend on which printer you're using and what resin you're using with it.

Jeremy Smith:
Then you'll take it to your mold machine. And with this process you might have to do some increased secondary operations. But all those steps together you can produce prototype parts in 2 weeks, or even less, with this process.

Jeremy Smith:
allowing you to then test those parts and iterate with them. So once you do that testing and iteration, you'll go back. Repeat the process, though your part design should be captured in that testing and iteration phase. You'll recreate your tool. You'll print the tools, you'll remove the tools, and then you'll you'll do your secondary operations, which includes demolting, annealing and then any post process machining.

Jeremy Smith:
So now I want to talk about the

Jeremy Smith:
process in real app, real world applications. And at this time I'm actually gonna push out a quiz to you guys that I'd like your feedback on. How long you think it took us to print 72 molds for these small gears we had 2 different part numbers here combined. We had to produce 72 molds, and there's a little hint there that the size of those molds is about 3, inch by 4, inch by 2 inch. And now I'm gonna launch a quiz that you can answer to say, how long do you think it took us to print these tools.

Clifford Green:
Jeremy, it's not letting me vote.

Jeremy Smith:
Alright. We just about have, everyone answered. I'm gonna give it another

Jeremy Smith:
5 s.

Jeremy Smith:
Alright. So we had one person select 12 h, and then half of you split between 18 h and 20 for it.

Jeremy Smith:
The answer is

Jeremy Smith:
18 h. So Clifford, tell us a bit about this process, and how we were able to produce 72 molds in such a short order.

Clifford Green:
Fortunately for us, the parting line on this particular gear was flat, so I was able to then print the what traditionally injection morning would be the A side we call Mohawk style, and you can see on the top where they're just basically domino stacked up you can fit a lot on a 30 bill plane that way.

Clifford Green:
and then with the bottom we were able to. Then fit 4 on there and if you know 3D printing resin systems.

Clifford Green:
You don't want to continually to just print 4 things over and over and over again the same spot as the film. So this configuration. Also, let us do a couple of different configuration where we can move the 4 around and kind of gain life to our resin, bat

Clifford Green:
and then from there we were just

Clifford Green:
on repeat, going through the different versions of the prints. And

Clifford Green:
yeah, 18 h to print 72 molds, and each mold takes 2 parts. Actually.

Clifford Green:
So 80 side.

Jeremy Smith:
How much of this process is what we call lights out process.

Clifford Green:
To remove

Clifford Green:
parts off the bill plane takes about 10 min

Clifford Green:
you have to refill the resin bad and queue up the next print and then you got also washing care while you're doing that. So it's about 20 min of operator time in between the print times.

Jeremy Smith:
Alright.

Jeremy Smith:
So now I'm gonna ask you, Clifford, to kind of walk through the design advantages for a given part with the free form process.

Clifford Green:
Yeah, with a free form injection molding. The way that we can compress the design cycle is when people want parts in hand. We're able to then just make a negative copy of the mold so we can ignore still tooling requirements like ejector pens

Clifford Green:
and drag angles

Clifford Green:
and then if there's a slide or rotating core, well, we just dissolve that out anyways. And then, because we are shooting into a cold mold there's no need to develop cooling or hot oil lines within the mold, because it's just room temperature

Clifford Green:
so that allows you to cut out a lot of that steel tooling design process and going back and forth of saying, Well, I need an ejector PIN on this surface. Well, that surface is a cosmetic surface. So now you gotta figure out, how do you get injection somewhere?

Clifford Green:
for example. And then there are significant design considerations, though, is, you gotta know design for 3D printing.

Clifford Green:
You gotta know XY and Z. Tolerancing of those machines and printers how the slicing tools work

Clifford Green:
and the overhead and bridge limitations of the printers.

Clifford Green:
One thing that I've found is

Clifford Green:
when you're doing a 3 piece mold like what we're showing it is extremely beneficial to print in the same direction for all the parts. Unfortunately for the part that's there is. Well, the core is printed in a different direction.

Clifford Green:
So it's tolerancing is off by a little bit. So you got to be prepared to either make modifications or slot something to make sure that then those tolerances are inconsequential to the final part.

Jeremy Smith:
So what you're saying is that the geometry of a given part with this process is only bound by what can be 3D. Printed. You're no longer bound by some of the requirements for an injection molded production tool.

Clifford Green:
With with within a point. Boxes, for example, have large overhings.

Clifford Green:
so we would have to theoretically print them in separate sections, and both them together.

Jeremy Smith:
Okay? And speaking of multi-part tools, walk us through how you can design a tool to be essentially AV and reuse that instead of chemically demolit.

Clifford Green:
Yes. So this is something that I'm really excited about I'm gonna spend the most of this year trying to figure out how to improve upon ab reasonable tooling, which is basically navy tools just open and shut. No overhings.

Clifford Green:
this is great because you don't have to design for ejector pins or cooling, or how oil lines. But you do

Clifford Green:
remove the ability to

Clifford Green:
you have to start designing for draft angles. You gotta remove all your undercuts, and you also do happen to know how to design for 3D. Printing. This was a demo part that we did the A and B side are

Clifford Green:
are drafted at 3 degrees we handloaded pins, and then we injection molded with a unfilled high temp material, and we were able to then encapsulate those pins. And the the material is then re hand loaded and shot one more time. We're finding out that you have to maintain the

Clifford Green:
a nice cold temperature with these molds, as you injection mold into them they start

Clifford Green:
gaining heat.

Clifford Green:
and you have to pull that key out of them somehow.

Clifford Green:
either by cycling in new molds

Clifford Green:
or pulling them with fans or something. The ability to reuse these tools, though, is very economical. Because versus the single shot, you know, getting 5 more parts out of a AV tool is very advantageous.

Jeremy Smith:
Absolutely. And for those of you who remember a few slides ago I mentioned prototype tooling, where you'll kind of get a a small brick of aluminum or software steel machine on your surface. This is doing that same process, but with a 3D. Printed tool at a much lower cost and a much higher turnaround. So with this process, here is we increase the repeatability of each tool. Those prototype tooling options really become.

Jeremy Smith:
you know not advantageous at all.

Jeremy Smith:
And Clifford kind of summarize our approach to this process.

Clifford Green:
Yeah. So I'll find uniquely

Clifford Green:
positioned to be leaders in this kind of additive injection molding we have. First off we have a strong background in injection. Molding. We

Clifford Green:
we do steel tools. We understand how they're made how they're designed, and we're able to then use that knowledge. And then, with our 3D printing experience kind of copy those same techniques.

Clifford Green:
We

Clifford Green:
have now an in-house injection molding press. So we're able to now iterate faster than ever before.

Clifford Green:
And if that in in house injection, mulling press cannot handle the volume or pressures needed. We have an amazing supplier network that can shoot these molds for us.

Clifford Green:
We are very lucky to be partners with 2 different molding shops. And they produce really, really good work for us.

Clifford Green:
And also, you know, we have the in house computer aided engineering tools where saw works experts. We know moldex very, very well. So

Clifford Green:
we have this whole process

Clifford Green:
circled in. And this is our wheelhouse.

Jeremy Smith:
So if I'm understanding you correctly, you're able to print a tool perfectly the first time without any issues.

Clifford Green:
No, no, no, and that is something that we are learning. And we're constantly improving our knowledge upon. We are also going in with multiple ideas sometimes. My favorite example recently was, there was a

Clifford Green:
eighth inch hole going through the middle of a part. I doubted that it would work, but if it did, it would save us some machining. So we shot both. We shot with the hole without the hole

Clifford Green:
on the same print that, too. So it was no more time to me to do the extra work.

Clifford Green:
It was just extra resin extra material cost, but from there within. We were able to then shoot both and demol, and find out well which one was better.

Jeremy Smith:
And what you said there is is very important, because it allow, or it it hits on the advantages of that 3D. Putting in that free form process is, we're actually iterating in the same step. At the same time, you're able to trial multiple different designs from the get, go and and analyze those throughout the whole process together. Which expedites and further accelerates that prototype cycle.

Jeremy Smith:
So we've talked about the functionality of it. Clifford, you wanna walk us through how Rpm materials can compare to some standard higher strength. Printed materials.

Clifford Green:
Yeah. So I I get this a lot is, you know you, you have 3D printers want you just 3D print the part. Well, our customers often come to us with the need of real world strengths

Clifford Green:
for their samples and their demonstration parts. So I took some commonly used 3D print resins, and you know you start looking at the tensile strength, and you know they're barely out of the teams in a ksi flexible strength. Is not that great?

Clifford Green:
And then you compare them to Hx. 5, which is characterized? We shot tensile bars and flexible bars.

Clifford Green:
And that is our, you know, 35 ksi, 44.4 ksi flexural.

Clifford Green:
And we're also able to, you know, run other materials. Do you want, you know, polypropylene P. Eyes, all these things are stronger than what you can get out of your resin 3D. Printer. So if that's something that you are needing for this. This is the perfect program to

Clifford Green:
achieve those strengths.

Jeremy Smith:
So really driving home the functionality of this process increasing the strength of your part to that of an injection molded part.

Jeremy Smith:
So I now, I wanna walk through a case study on a recent effort that we did that really highlighted the test before you invest aspects of this process. So we had a customer in a commercial archery space come to us with an issue that the knock, the part of the arrow that actually attaches to the string was failing on some high performance cross

Jeremy Smith:
the existing material was a glass filled nylon that had

Jeremy Smith:
modest strength but had really not been adapted to the increasing force of these high performance cross. So they came to us to trial a couple of different materials and see if there's a better solution out there to meet the higher standards of these new high performance boats. So we went through a material trial of our Hx. 5 material, and then a glass, Bill Pei, thinking that that was a good reference point of 2 different parts to actually run mechanical testing.

Jeremy Smith:
And I'm actually gonna share a video. Now that walks through the entire process of Rpm. From Clifford's point of view.

Jeremy Smith:
and for those of you who are curious, this is at about half speed. Clifford, after a few cups of coffee, works really fast.

Jeremy Smith:
So this is the clean and cure part of the printing process.

Jeremy Smith:
This specific resin requires a special curing process to lock in its its performance.

Jeremy Smith:
Then we took it to our injection molding press.

Jeremy Smith:
So to produce 32 parts, it took us about 48 h each of our tools produced. Had 4 cavities in there. Just based on the pressure required the volume of the shot size and then the, you know, characteristics of the geometry. Clifford was able to fit multiple parts in a single tool, increasing that repeatability and that economics of this process

Jeremy Smith:
to summarize that you see that it took less than 2 days to produce 72 parts ready for testing.

Jeremy Smith:
We then took these parts to the test bed ran. Comparisons showed that the Hx. 5 material was well performing, and just yesterday, in fact, put it on a bow and tested it, and while it did perform. Well, there are some design changes that we're gonna make to increase its capability to truly enhance the product and not just meet the requirements, but increase the capability of this product.

Jeremy Smith:
Because it is a large high performance consumer. Good that if we can increase the product while maintaining the capability and the price point. It's gonna be very impactful for that market. And this was all done in really a week's time.

Jeremy Smith:
There was a a little bit of a lag waiting for the customer to join us with his his test unit. But our in house testing and molding time was really a couple of days, and it allowed us to iterate the design and repeat the process for fit form and function.

Jeremy Smith:
and one last, just comparison of the mechanical performance with just one material associated with it. You'll see here how the Rpm process compares to a production tool with heated channels and proper, hard and steel versus 3D. Printed, Hx. 5. Going back to the question that Clifford gets asked all the time, why not just 3D. Print with this material. And when you're talking about test articles or functional prototypes, or potentially even low

Jeremy Smith:
volume production units that truly do need to perform, you see that the mechanical strength of 3D. Printed fiber filled materials

Jeremy Smith:
suffers greatly the Rpm. Process because it is not a heated tool, and it has some different pressures associated with it. It does suffer a little bit less mechanically we went out and produce test coupons for these tests, and more, and showed that we were at about a 8% loss in tensile, about a 15% loss in flexural and compared to pretty printing, it's a much better delta. This is considerable as a

Jeremy Smith:
near

Jeremy Smith:
injection, molded strength. We can take apart, test it to these standards, and know that with the production tool values without the highly characterized HX. 5 or any other material. We can get a sense of the functionality of that part within days which is important for this process

Jeremy Smith:
to wrap up with the table that we looked at earlier. Obviously, the rapid prototype moving added on the end, it's low cost. It's rapid turn. It's the same essentially costing lead time of 3D printing with the introduction of injection molded. And it's gonna depend on the resin that you use. You are gonna get high strength out of these parts. You're gonna get weight positive using these advanced materials.

Jeremy Smith:
And it's highly iterative, too, like Clifford described. We're able to iterate at the same time, and if we need to go back and reprint, it only takes the time to print and shoot again, which again can happen in days.

Jeremy Smith:
So with that, I'm gonna leave it on this QR code page here for you guys to snap and follow to our website. If you are interested in understanding more about the process, wonder if your prototype can be made with this process. Any given material or just want to learn more or get some more expertise out of Clifford.

Jeremy Smith:
So with that I thank you all for joining us. I thank Clifford for sharing his expertise, and we'll turn it over to the QA. Session. We already have a few questions delivered, but as we speak here, please feel free to continue asking questions.

Jeremy Smith:
So the first question comes, is there any limitation for the Rm rpm. Process in comparison to injection, molding, steel tool for fiber orientation, control of filled materials. And that sounds like a Clifford answer.

Clifford Green:
This.

Clifford Green:
So

Clifford Green:
the limitations

Clifford Green:
are gating

Clifford Green:
so

Clifford Green:
with free form, injection, molding, and the rpm process. The

Clifford Green:
gating location is usually into a a thicker section. To make sure it fills

Clifford Green:
better.

Clifford Green:
We can get into multiple areas this way.

Clifford Green:
and

Clifford Green:
you know, you're also sometimes limited on your fiber size. Also.

Clifford Green:
That's something that should be taken offline and kind of discussed on while you're asking that, and to just see, like in the more flow. Are we achieving what you want

Clifford Green:
from a fire orientation control standpoint.

Jeremy Smith:
Alright. Thank you for that, Clifford.

Jeremy Smith:
Our next question comes and says, have you performed any studies on impact of Rpm. Mold temperature on park properties. What is the Max temperature that a resin mold can reach during the Rpm shoe and Clifford? This does sound like a question for you as well.

Clifford Green:
Yeah, can you actually go back to a previous slide?

Clifford Green:
Cause we do have.

Clifford Green:
There you go. Yeah. One. But.

Jeremy Smith:
But

Jeremy Smith:
this one here.

Clifford Green:
Yep.

Clifford Green:
So these are the production tool. Hx, 5 is our tensile bars shot in a production tool. And then we shot rpm, tensile bars and flexible bars, and you can see the changes of tensile strength. And since it is

Clifford Green:
it's not as intentionally strong. It has a little bit more flexible or tensor modulus

Clifford Green:
and then your flexible strength goes down.

Clifford Green:
and the modules just go up a little bit more.

Clifford Green:
and then the 3D. Printed Hx. 5 that is, from a pellet to extruder on a 3D gantry machine.

Jeremy Smith:
And what is the Max temperature that this Xmo resin can reach during the Rpm. Shoot.

Clifford Green:
It, I think. The data sheet is

Clifford Green:
300 Fahrenheit.

Jeremy Smith:
And as a reference, the Hx. 5. Material that we are injecting into it is coming in at about 700 degrees, so that process does affect the you know, not only mechanical stability of the part, but the dimensional stability of the part. So understanding how to optimize your tool design for the impact of that heat and that pressure as what cliff is really great at.

Clifford Green:
And there are. There's a I think, a new resin that's about to come out that has a higher temperature range.

Clifford Green:
So we're excited to see that one come out from Nexa

Clifford Green:
and.

Jeremy Smith:
Removed

Jeremy Smith:
absolutely that that could further increase our properties, but also allow us to do perhaps larger geometries or more complex shapes.

Jeremy Smith:
Alright, one more question, what is the size of the bill plate?

Clifford Green:
So I I like that question because

Clifford Green:
it's not the sense Bill. Play our current mold cavities. Dimensions is 8 inches by 4 inches by 4 inches.

Clifford Green:
So the bill plate of the 3D printer is irrelevant. Because we can.

Clifford Green:
you know, print that size. But what what's the most important right now is your part inside of that can be 8 inches by 4 inches by 4 inches.

Jeremy Smith:
Right, and and that can theoretically grow as well. There will be a limit on that before there's a limit. On how many modular pieces of a tool you can assemble together. In theory you could probably do a thousand piece tool right? That sounds fun.

Clifford Green:
Yeah. Yeah. And and you're also, you know, there's a certain point, where the economics

Clifford Green:
of a steel tool. That's quickly made, as you discussed earlier in the presentation, and the resin cost of the 3D print start becoming one to one cause. If you need 10 pieces, and the part is so big that the resin cost is

Clifford Green:
I don't know 1,000 parts. You might be able to run into the territory where that's when the aluminum or soft seal tooling would be more beneficial.

Jeremy Smith:
So you're telling me there's a chance.

Clifford Green:
If you have the time like that, there's there's a whole bunch of things to weigh

Clifford Green:
and and think that's the thing is.

Clifford Green:
we can help guide you to what would be the best solution for you, for your programs timeframe. And what's the most economical, and

Clifford Green:
you know best part to get out of.

Jeremy Smith:
Absolutely

Jeremy Smith:
and we have one last comment more than a question, and it comes from Glenn, embry at Prudent one of our great partners. And he's really saying, if you are using this process to test or build your parts, that you intend to injection mold long term, that you intend to build a steel tool for once you've tested and proven out that design.

Jeremy Smith:
you have to keep in mind that just because you can do things in the free form process. Less draft geometries that are difficult to do in a mechanical ejection. Steel tool. You should still put those in where you will need to get so that your parts would be representative from a fit that you would get from a steel tool. And, Clifford, do you want to elaborate on your answer that you put typed in there.

Clifford Green:
Yeah. So I do prefer to go ahead and do the full Dfm process. Mainly because then I can potentially get to that AV tooling. That's reusable.

Clifford Green:
But I've been on a few programs here at Alpine, where speed of

Clifford Green:
just getting the parts printed and done took precedent over getting the full injection. Boing. Dfm, finished. Those usually come from more industrial design houses that want to try Hx. 5,

Clifford Green:
and they're going to then come back later with a full Dfm process later, and they understand that. But I mean, when you're trying to meet samples for a trade show deadline, you're going to have to sometimes cut corners. And that's one thing that free room injection billing lets us do sometimes is to cut those corners.

Jeremy Smith:
Absolutely. And and you mentioned it. Well, this is typically coming from a source that has designed a part to be either it's final, form, functional or for a different manufacturing process, like machining out of a stock so incorporating those while it is important for the production tool. If you wanna expedite the prototype process report, and that's when you can do this. But, Glenn, you are absolutely right. The more you can include

Jeremy Smith:
in that first prototype the better it is when you move to the production piece. So at this time there are no other questions I'll leave it here for a a few seconds to see if anyone has any more to s to jump in. But again, I would like to thank everyone for joining us for the questions that were asked. You can follow this page here to learn more about this prototype process, how it can work for you

Jeremy Smith:
and also keep an eye out for our next webinar session.

Jeremy Smith:
Alright! No other questions coming in again. I thank you all for joining us this morning, evening afternoon, wherever you are. We look forward to seeing you next time. Thank you.

Speakers

Senior Mechanical Engineer

Alpine Advanced Materials