Rapid tooling (RT) has recently become more important due to the requirement of rapid manufacturing. RT can manufacture stronger mold and functional component than rapid prototyping (RP) does. Besides, functional component and production are valued gradually. Functionally graded materials (FGM) technology is proposed to apply to functional component. This study aims to propose a new path planning, contour path method, and control feed rate of two powder feeders with two DC server motors to design a functionally graded material (FGM) structure. The continuous material distribution in each layer is changed into discrete stepwise grading by contour path method. It can avoid the problem of manufacturing process with Zig-Zag and increase the resolution of the grading region. Furthermore, the powder delivery database of material is built to control the composition of FGM accurately. Finally, the results of path planning and the case of powder feed are successfully demonstrated

In recent years, Rapid Tooling (RT) has become more important because of the requirement of rapid manufacturing. RT can be used to produce temporary mold, even permanent mold in mass production. RT makes more benefit from design stage to mass production. The objective of this research is to develop the Direct Metallic Rapid Tooling System and identify process parameters of laser cladding. A metallic powder feeder system, a three-axis motion control system, a 500W Nd-YAG laser system, a shielding gas supply system, and a powder nozzle are incorporated for the hardware architecture in Direct Metallic Rapid Tooling System. Besides, the designed software that includes slicing algorithm with bucket sorting, contour generation and tool path generation algorithm are presented briefly. Effort was attempted to find out the better process parameters of laser cladding using single clad and cladding layer techniques. Based on the investigation, some metallic RT parts were fabricated and discussed.