Composite Tooling

Production Tooling


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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.

CFOAM carbon foam composite tool
CFOAM core winglet tool with low thermal mass
CFOAM core winglet tool side view
Lightweight composite tool
Large-scale fiberglass composite tool
Composite cure tool with invar inserts
“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.”