3D printing in H13 tool steel is said to enable design teams to quickly produce dies featuring complex extrusion profiles.
Additive manufacturing company, Desktop Metal has today announced the launch of H13 tool steel for its office-friendly Studio System metal 3D printer.
Widely used in hot work and cold work tooling applications, H13 provides stability in heat treatment, hot hardness and abrasion resistance and is said to be ideal for printing mould inserts, extrusion dies, forging dies, and sheet metal tooling, including stamping, embossing, bending, and countersinking.
Ric Fulop, CEO and co-founder of Desktop Metal explained: “This is a key competitive advantage to enable rapid iteration and refinement of tools requiring H13, and the reduction of manufacturing lead times. Teams will also be able to achieve complex geometries that have not been possible with traditional manufacturing methods like machining.”
H13 tool steel joins 316L and 17-4 PH stainless steels in the Studio System's printable materials library. Early applications include injection mould core parts for the medical industry, extrusion dies, and die casting moulds for consumer products.
In one example, injection mould cores used for the moulding of mouthpieces for asthma inhalers were printed to incorporate conformal cooling channels and increase the mould's cooling rate which can traditionally account for up to 95 percent of the overall cycle time. This reduction in allows more parts to be moulded every hour.
Chris Aiello, Operations Manager at Alpha Precision Group commented: "Wear resistance, high hardness, toughness, and resistance to thermal fatigue are just a few of H13's benefits. The downside was always getting a tool maker to want to work with it. Now that it is available with the Studio System, all of these same benefits will be ready to deploy to the shop floor in days rather than months.”
For wearables, the material was used in the manufacture of a zipper die casting mould featuring fine details including a logo, textures, and subtle draft angles which are critical to the part’s moulding success. Combined with the upgraded Studio System’s high resolution printhead, users can achieve fine details and also save time and costs compared to traditional machining methods.
“In my experience, 3D printing H13 for sheet metal forming tools and stamping is an opportunity for a competitive advantage that will be hard to match," said Steve Lynch, Director of Business Development at Macy Industries, Inc. “Breaking the norm of how stamping dies are designed and created will be a huge step for engineering, reducing the time and cost for prototyping new ideas.”
Further application areas include printing extrusion dies for industry. Manufacturing in H13 tool steel is said to enable design teams to quickly produce dies featuring complex extrusion profiles and do so in a material capable of withstanding the extreme temperatures and pressures required to successfully push molten materials.
Desktop Metal says it plans to introduce additional core metals to its portfolio, including superalloys, carbon steels and copper.
