Development of an adjustable mold box for making silicone rubber mold

Rapid tooling technology is regarded as an important approach of reducing the cost and time to market for new products. Silicone rubber mold is widely employed in the indirect tooling of rapid tooling technology because it owns flexible and elastic characteristics so that parts with sophisticated geometry can be fabricated. The disadvantages of traditional mold box preparation procedure include time-consuming, more man-power and non cost-effective. To solve this problem, an adjustable mold box technology is proposed and implemented. It is found that the savings in preparation time of mold box is about 98 % and it can be done only by one person using this adjustable mold box technology. The user-friendly man-machine interface is also developed for increasing the efficiency in the manufacturing of the silicone rubber mold.