By Scott Kraemer, Tooling Engineer and Mantle Senior Application Engineer
Tooling components—like cavities, cores, gate inserts, sprue bushings, and more used in injection molding, metal injection molding, and die-casting processes—are among the fastest-growing applications for metal 3D printing
Why is 3D printing a valid manufacturing option for tooling?
4 Reasons to 3D Print Metal Tooling Components
- Reducing cycle times and mitigating common molding defects through conformal cooling and thermal management
- Reduce lead times
- Reduce costs
- Reduce dependency on highly skilled labor
First, geometry so complex it can’t be cast or machined can often be easily 3D printed. A great example is the ability to print very complex cooling (or heating) lines in plastic injection mold inserts. While drilling conventional metal inserts can only produce straight lines and right angles, it’s easy to print spiral cooling/heating channels that wrap around difficult geometry that otherwise would be hard to reach. In addition, it’s possible to print cooling lines for deep, tall-fingered geometries that cannot be cooled or would require a bubbler or cascade fitting. This permits molders to better control mold temperatures, reduce rejects, shorten cycle time, improve dimensional stability and surface finish, and facilitate demolding. Such optimized cooling lines, often called conformal cooling, have been proven to reduce cycle times by 25% to 75% in production. In a super-competitive market like plastic molding, this kind of productivity boost is a considerable competitive advantage.
This insert geometry designed by Westminster Tool shows how 3D printed conformal cooling lines (blue) can wrap around critical part details that would be inefficient or impossible to reach otherwise. Cooling lines can be designed without the constraints of traditional drilling, which is limited to straight lines and right angles .
Second, tool components from some metal 3D printing systems offer speed advantages. While the design phase is roughly the same between additive and subtractive processes, inserts can be printed in days vs. machined, and EDM’d which often takes weeks or even months. This substantially shortens lead times.
With 3D printing, most, if not all, of the expensive and time-consuming steps of making tooling traditionally can be avoided
Third, tool components from some metal 3D printing systems offer cost savings. Because components can be printed without programming skill or extensive operator time, the cost of multiple machining and EDM steps is avoided. Examples have demonstrated cost savings of over 75% compared to the cost of conventional tool manufacturing.
Fourth, the injection molding industry faces a labor shortage, struggling to find qualified toolmakers. Metal 3D printing allows tooling components to be produced extremely easily, at just the push of a button, without requiring highly skilled toolmakers’ time. This allows for tool shops to increase their capacity as toolmakers can focus on the critical final tasks of a tool, final fitting, and critical tolerance work, while the printed produces nearly finished inserts in the background. Similarly, printing frees up toolmakers’ time to focus on critical operations such as tool repair and maintenance.
About Scott:
Scott Kraemer is a Senior Application Engineer at Mantle. He is passionate about toolmaking and has spent his career as a mold designer, tooling engineer, and injection molding specialist at companies like Innatech, L&L Products, and PTI Engineered Plastics. For the last 8 years, Scott has been at the forefront of applying 3D printing to the tooling industry and has worked with many leading metal and polymer 3D printers.
