Production Tooling

Carbon Foam (CFOAM) Composite Tooling


A New Class of Composite Tooling

The invention of CFOAM – a strong, low CTE foam – opened up the design envelope for an entirely new class of composite tooling.

Traditional composite tooling uses complex egg crate structures to hold the tooling surface from distorting. It also requires the building of a tool to form the surface of the tool, actually creating the need to build two tools.

To build a durable tool with CFOAM carbon foam, the foam is glued into a block, machined to shape, and a hard composite surface is applied, elminating the cost of building a composite master.

Touchstone has built hundreds of CFOAM tools. They are lightweight, fast to build and low in thermal mass.

CFOAM carbon foam tool being machined
Stringer composite tool
Collapsable CFOAM mandrel tool
“The invention of CFOAM – a strong, low CTE foam – opened up the design envelope for an entirely new class of composite tooling.”

Lay-Up Mandrel

Removing mandrel for hollow mandrel tool
Embedding thermocouples in composite tool
Small rocket composite mandrel
CFOAM rocket tool
Tool with an RA better than 8