Flexible tools in mould and formwork making: A review

The rigid and one-off moulds are quite insufficient to fabricate differentiated and non-standard building components due to the low adaptation capability of mass production to changing demands of the market. Aligning with mass customisation, flexible tools are developed to solve time, cost and waste problems in moulding and casting of variable building components in the architecture, engineering, and construction. This study guides architects and engineers in the development of flexible moulds and tooling for building components. This paper aims to review the latest research trends by analysing the publications from 2004 to 2019. The systematic mapping method was adopted from software engineering to determine the-state-of-the-art technologies in flexible tools. The review study shows that flexible tools can be used to cast variable and non-standard building components by further researching on large-scale implementation, process capability and control. A survey of future trends in this promising field concludes this paper.