Composite Tooling
Production Tooling
Lower Tooling Costs
Touchstone has a wide variety of composite tooling solutions from low-temperature tooling that cures at 180ºF to high-temperature aerospace tooling curing at 375ºF to ultra-high-temperature composite tooling for cyanate esters and polyimids curing at 750ºF.
Traditional composite tooling utilizes complex egg crate structures. Tool surfaces are often pulled off of low-temperature, high-CTE foams and then go through a free-standing post cure where the stresses in the laminate cause movement.
With the development of CFOAM, for the first time, a low CTE foam could be used as a core and remain with the tools through its use adding inherent stiffness. Additionally, CFOAM tools eliminate the need for a source tool by directly machining the desired shape into the CFOAM block. By eliminating the source tool, the number of steps needed to produce a finish tool is reduced lowering the overall tooling costs.
“With the development of CFOAM, for the first time, a low CTE foam could be used as a core and remain with the tools through its use adding inherent stiffness.”