The Manufacturing Process: What is Tooling?

Most people have a rough understanding of what product manufacturing is, but what is tooling? This term is thrown around casually in our industry but draws some pretty confusing looks from outsiders.

It’s almost like a secret handshake, it’s something you need to know but takes a while to truly understand. An important part of the end-to-end product development process – as it involves all of the components required to manufacture your product, and the right tooling can make all the difference.

Forming a plastic container.

What is Tooling?

When you create any physical hardware product, you need the right equipment and tools to manufacture it. Thus, tooling is the process of designing and engineering these custom tools that are necessary to make products for inventors.

The more appropriate your tools are for your product, the more efficient, accurate, and scalable the manufacturing process is. Because of this, tooling is never a one-size-fits-all solution. Small changes to your tooling can have huge impacts on the quality, quantity, or even the price of your product. As a result, to optimize the manufacturing process, tooling should be customized to your product.

Types of Tools

Despite the number of types of manufacturing tools and equipment out there, each one should be custom-designed to output the desired volume and quality. Consider the following when looking for tooling help as an inventor.

Some of you may prefer to manufacture several hundred units to test in the market, while others may be ready for mass production. In the design of these tools, it’s also important to take into consideration the safety of the tool and to ensure consistent output of the part or product. Some of the most common types of tooling are listed below.

• Molds, such as the ones we use in rotomolding, like our client’s CNCT.
• Work-holding and support devices such as a jig or a fixture.
• Punching tooling for forming.
• Cutting machinery like milling machines

Looking for more tooling help? Feel free to set up a free consultation with our product strategy team.