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<p>Additive Manufacturing offers a flexible route for rapid tooling and prototype production within conventional process chains. This study investigates its integration into the Liquid Injection Molding process for Liquid Silicone Rubber components, aiming to reduce tooling cost and lead time while maintaining process fidelity. A hybrid workflow was developed using low-cost Fused Deposition Modeling to fabricate polymer molds compatible with injection molding of silicone rubber at room temperature. Five mold iterations were designed and tested at 23&#xa0;°C, focusing on cavity filling, venting efficiency, and demolding performance. The experimental campaign followed an industrial-style trial-and-error approach, progressively improving flow uniformity and reducing bubble entrapment without thermal deformation of the polymer tooling. A Geometrical Complexity Coefficient was introduced to link mold design complexity with economic performance through a parametric cost model comparing additive and subtractive tooling routes. Quantitative analysis showed that the proposed solution lowered total fabrication cost by about 76% (from €10,874 to €2,630) and reduced production time from several days to 7&#xa0;h. The Break-Even Point decreased from 3,761 to 909 units, and the Return on Investment increased from 56.5% to 111.0%. These results validate the technical and economic feasibility of using additive manufacturing to produce molds for room-temperature, low-pressure, manual silicone injection in a laboratory setting, demonstrating a replicable hybrid approach that enables cost-effective, geometry-driven toolmaking for small-batch and prototype applications. Extrapolation to industrial high-pressure, high-temperature LIM at production scale requires further validation and is beyond the present work.</p>

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Accelerating liquid silicone rubber tooling: technical and economic validation of FDM-printed molds through a geometrical complexity approach

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年5月30日

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  • Vittorio Villani,
  • Gennaro Salvatore Ponticelli,
  • Stefano Guarino

摘要

Additive Manufacturing offers a flexible route for rapid tooling and prototype production within conventional process chains. This study investigates its integration into the Liquid Injection Molding process for Liquid Silicone Rubber components, aiming to reduce tooling cost and lead time while maintaining process fidelity. A hybrid workflow was developed using low-cost Fused Deposition Modeling to fabricate polymer molds compatible with injection molding of silicone rubber at room temperature. Five mold iterations were designed and tested at 23 °C, focusing on cavity filling, venting efficiency, and demolding performance. The experimental campaign followed an industrial-style trial-and-error approach, progressively improving flow uniformity and reducing bubble entrapment without thermal deformation of the polymer tooling. A Geometrical Complexity Coefficient was introduced to link mold design complexity with economic performance through a parametric cost model comparing additive and subtractive tooling routes. Quantitative analysis showed that the proposed solution lowered total fabrication cost by about 76% (from €10,874 to €2,630) and reduced production time from several days to 7 h. The Break-Even Point decreased from 3,761 to 909 units, and the Return on Investment increased from 56.5% to 111.0%. These results validate the technical and economic feasibility of using additive manufacturing to produce molds for room-temperature, low-pressure, manual silicone injection in a laboratory setting, demonstrating a replicable hybrid approach that enables cost-effective, geometry-driven toolmaking for small-batch and prototype applications. Extrapolation to industrial high-pressure, high-temperature LIM at production scale requires further validation and is beyond the present work.