Ford Motor Company
1994 Excellence Award Winner

Ford heralds a new era of manufacturing innovation – a dramatic shortcut to prototype tooling with tremendous potential for slashing time and cost for production tooling. 

With a single project triumph, Ford has begun a new era of “rapid manufacturing” by applying 3D Systems’ QuickCastTM build style to the development of both prototype and, ultimately, production tooling. Such innovation demonstrates the potential to save manufacturing industries millions in tooling costs.

Ingenuity was Ford's most critical ingredient.
When production units of a rear wiper motor cover for the 1994 Explorer were needed for testing, several tooling alternatives were explored. Traditional methods would have provided the tool in three months. Ford used the QuickCast build style in its first application of rapid tooling by investment casting stereolithography mold halves to create the hard tool.

"QuickCast for rapid tooling can be applied to a majority of the components suitable for injection molding that are designed by Ford Motor Company."
                                                - Karl Denton, Engineering Technologist
                                                Ford Motor Company

They first built an SL model of the cover, fit it over the wiper motor to verify design integrity, and found a clearance problem. The plastic part was modified by hand, fit was re-verified, and the CAD model adjusted. Pro/MOLDESIGN software was then used to create "negative" mold halves from the same CAD data. Shrink factors were applied to compensate for the SL resin, A2 steel, and polypropylene end product material.

The SLA® 250 system generated QuickCast build style patterns resulted in a core and cavity pair investment cast in A2 steel. Knowledge of the cast metal's characteristics facilitated changes in a second set of production tooling, e.g., inclusion of ejector holes and addition of cooling lines. The turnaround time for the second set of tooling was only four weeks. And the cost for "QuickCast Tooling" was only $5,000 per tool set, compared to the $33,000 quoted for machining a single tool. Ford was able to start durability and water flow testing 18 months ahead of schedule, with costs reduced by 45% and time savings of more than 40% achieved.