Pilot Demonstration of Hot Sheet Metal Forming Using 3D Printed Dies

Abstract

Since the popularization of press hardening in the early noughties, die and tooling systems have experienced considerable advances, with tool refrigeration as an important focus. However, it is still complicated to obtain homogeneous cooling and avoid hot spot issues in complex geometries. Additive Manufacturing allows designing cavities inside the material volume with little limitation in terms of channel intersection or bore entering and exit points. In this sense, this technology is a natural fit for obtaining surface-conforming cooling channels: an attractive prospect for refrigerated tools. This work describes a pilot experience in 3D-printed press hardening tools, comparing the performance of additive manufactured Maraging steel 1.2709 to conventional wrought hot work tool steel H13 on two different metrics: durability and thermal performance. For the first, wear studies were performed in a controlled pilot plant environment after 800 hot stamping strokes in an omega tool configuration. On the second, a demonstrator tool based on a commercial tool with hot spot issues, was produced by 3D printing including surface-conformal cooling channels. This tool was then used in a pilot press hardening line, in which tool temperature was analyzed and compared to an equivalent tool produced by conventional means. Results show that the Additive Manufacturing technologies can be successfully applied to the production of press hardening dies, particularly in intricate geometries where new cooling channel design strategies offer a solution for hot spots and inhomogeneous thermal loads.

Wear Mechanisms in Press Hardening: An Analysis through Comparison of Tribological Tests and Industrial Tools

“…This can be contrasted with other tests run in this same configuration by the same authors. In [41], the same pilot test configuration is used to run an 800-cycle production campaign comparing QRO90 and additive manufactured 1.2709 steel, both at an approximate hardness of 50 HRC. The results in that case show very similar sparse wear fringes, despite the significant differences in the chemical compositions of the two steels.…”

Manufacturing Process of Helicopter Tail Rotor Blades from Composite Materials Using 3D-Printed Moulds

“…This is possible because traditionally immediate-need TDVs are manufactured using computer numerical control (CNC) machines, which increase production and maintenance costs for this section that represents manufacturing preparation for a part/sub-part [25]. TDVs used in production that are currently suitable for additive manufacturing are represented by the following categories: templates for layout/marking [26,27], positioning/assembly devices [28,29], moulds for vacuum forming [30,31], moulds for injection moulding of plastics or vulcanisation of rubber [32][33][34], presses for bending thin sheets [35][36][37], and moulds for making composite parts [38][39][40].…”

Additive Manufacturing of Hot-Forming Dies Using Laser Powder Bed Fusion and Wire Arc Direct Energy Deposition Technologies

“…Nycz et al used high-productivity WA-DED (5.5 kg/h) for the production of a large-scale (180 kg) stamping die from Lincoln L-59 mild steel coated with AISI 410 alloy. L-DEDp has been extensively used to produce sheet metal forming-press-hardening dies with cooling channels, for example, in the studies by Müller et al [21], Gebauer et al [22], Cortina et al [23] and Pujante et al [24].…”