Renewal of pocketed tooling

Modern manufacturing requires high quality tooling for most subtractive processes. The prevalent use of pocketed cutting tools in manufacturing is to purchase, use and dispose the tool body either at end of life. Tooling Reclamation has been proven to be an effective way of retaining value through reuse of materials and resources, saving up to 75% of cost of new. However, there exist commercial, technical and educational barriers to universal uptake of such a service. It is estimated that of the £8M tooling market, only 30% is reintroduced after end-of-life, of which less than 10% are given a third or fourth life.
This feasibility study will establish the main requirements and barriers from a broad sample of our existing and potential customer base, and how these may be overcome by including enabling technologies, infrastructure and business model in the circular renewal process. It will also investigate the requirements to support scaling-up of renewal capacity for economic tool renewal.