Design and Manufacture of Production Tooling

Tooling Creation   Tooling Design   Standard Elements in Tooling

Industrial production in human activity has been constantly developing new types of products and concurrently challenged with needs for reducing labor and material costs in the manufacture of products already assimilated. Both production development trends require creation of new processes and production means. However, the usefulness of a particular machine - production tooling - depends directly on its quality. It is the high-quality tooling that can provide savings in labor costs for production and maintenance of the machine.

Once the customer is in need for particular products, comes up with an idea of creating products, there is also a need for process design for manufacturing such products using dedicated equipment. To create such tooling the terms of reference are developed to reflect the operational purpose of the machine and its operating features. This document is of great importance as it underlies the tooling design process. Manufacture of the designed machine necessitates manufacturing process for tooling, and the resulting tooling must fully meet all the customer specified parameters, be suitable for the sequence of operation to manufacture the required finished products. The entire process of creating tooling from the idea and formulation of purpose to the finished tooling is divided accordingly into two phases - design and manufacture. The result of the first stage is the design engineering of tooling in the form of drawings and 3D models (hard and soft copies), whereas the result of the second stage is execution of said design through manufacture.

One of the key business lines of Ulyanovskiy Priboro-Remontniy Zavod is the design and manufacture of production tooling, whereby equipment and manufacturing capabilities allow the company to fulfill orders for molds and dies production with a high degree of precision and complexity.

Tool shop of Ulyanovskiy Priboro-Remontniy Zavod manufactures high-precision tooling, ie cold punching stamps, molds, high-priced and sophisticated units for both own needs and by order, where each manufacturing stage is important. It is the manufacture of tooling to a high professional standard subject to all the necessary production and technical requirements as early as at the project creation stage that contributed to a large extent to the build-up of a good business standing of UPRZ. Thanks to the reputation of a reliable partner and manufacturer the number of our new customers has been steadily increasing among organizations, private companies and sole proprietors.

Ulyanovskiy Priboro-Remontniy Zavod provides a full range of industrial services ranging from drafting and mathematical modeling of parts, manufacture of tooling, production of finished products (casting or cold stamping) to the assembly of items as complete units.

Production Tooling Design

Production tooling design is carried out by engineering department of the plant. Drawings of products are preliminary examined by a process engineer to determine the feasibility of their manufacture in the manner specified. This stage measures the feasibility of using the materials selected for the manufacture of products, with due regard for dimensions of parts with possible tolerances, manufacturing conditions, technological characteristics of material processing, financial costs, etc. Process engineers and designers consider possible changes in the components of the product design to reduce the prime cost of production tooling and simplify its design. Following adoption of the joint compromise decision the project is delivered to the customer for review and approval.

Tooling design process includes several stages:

• Creating a three-dimensional model of the product manufactured on the basis of a sketch, drawing or sample. However, the customer can be offered a variety of manufacturing methods. The resulting 3D model affords an opportunity to submit to the customer the product design for approval and assess compliance of the modeled part with the expected final product. At the end of this process, experts set about designing the mold.
• Engineering study, which involves the examination of molding and pressed parts. In the first case, a suitable material is selected with subsequent refinement of the gating system. Manufacture of products by stamping makes it necessary to determine the manufacturing method and sequence of manufacturing processes and operations, as well as the design of production tooling:
  • Tooling design engineering (die and mold);
  • Preparation of design and process documentation for production tooling;
  • Project approval by the customer.

Tooling design engineering takes into account the possibility and feasibility of using unified standard elements of the tooling design to:

• Reduce time for procurement, lathe, boring and drilling work; thus it will be possible to reduce time for manufacture of molds;
• Reduce labor costs, because focused manufacturing facilities are not required during manufacture of some elements;
• Increase service life and quality of molds. Standard elements are made of high-quality metals with the use of cutting edge dedicated equipment and subject to all features of the process environment, as well as using a dedicated production monitoring system.