Advancing Composite Tooling Through Automation
Saumil Patel, P.Eng., has been named a finalist in the Manufacturing & Tooling Innovation category of the American Composites Manufacturers Association Awards for Composites Excellence for his work on automating layer preparation in composite tooling workflows.
The innovation addresses a longstanding production bottleneck in layered mold manufacturing and demonstrates how workflow automation can significantly improve efficiency, consistency and scalability for custom composite tooling production.
Layered tooling is widely used to manufacture molds for complex architectural composite applications, including GRG, FRP and GFRC components. While the approach provides a cost-effective method for producing customized geometries, preparing sliced tooling layers for nesting and CNC machining has traditionally required repetitive manual operations that increase with mold complexity and layer count.
From Repetitive Preparation to Automated Output
To address this challenge, Mr. Patel developed a rule-based CAM automation workflow that transforms a labor-intensive preparation process into a single automated operation. Implemented as a custom software utility within the CAM environment, the system groups, separates and organizes sliced tooling layers using user-defined parameters.
Manual Workflow
- Separate individual tooling layers
- Organize machining-ready geometry
- Maintain layer and assembly sequence
- Manage identification and traceability
- Repeat operations for every mold layer
Rule-Based Workflow
- Execute preparation in one operation
- Group and organize geometry automatically
- Apply automated indexing and labeling
- Improve consistency across tooling programs
- Scale independently of mold layer count
Embedded Manufacturing Logic
The utility formalizes repeatable production decisions and applies them directly within the digital manufacturing environment. This reduces manual interaction while preserving the organization and traceability required for machining, assembly and quality control.
Sliced Geometry
Import the layered tooling geometry into the CAM environment.
User Parameters
Define the rules used to process and organize the layers.
Automation
Separate, group, index and label the tooling components.
CAM Output
Produce organized geometry ready for nesting and machining.
Preparation Time Reduced to Seconds
The workflow reduces preparation time from approximately 10 seconds per layer to less than 10 seconds per mold, regardless of layer count or geometric complexity. Automated indexing and labeling further improve traceability throughout machining, assembly and quality-control processes.
As composites manufacturing continues to demand greater customization and production efficiency, digital workflows that formalize and automate repetitive operations play an increasingly important role in improving scalability, quality and production performance.
Applied Across More Than 1,000 Molds
The solution has been successfully applied across more than 1,000 production molds used in GRG, FRP and GFRC fabrication for large-scale architectural projects.
By embedding procedural manufacturing logic directly into the digital workflow, the method improves consistency, reduces user effort and enables scalable production of high-volume custom tooling.