Metal 3D Printing: A New Tool for Mold Manufacturing

With the rapid development of science and technology, metal 3D printing technology, as an outstanding representative of additive manufacturing, is gradually becoming a new tool in the field of mold manufacturing. With its unique advantages, this technology has brought unprecedented changes to the mold manufacturing industry, and achieved significant results in cost reduction, efficiency increase and quality improvement.

Traditional mold manufacturing methods, such as machining, casting, etc., are often faced with difficult manufacturing, long cycle and high cost in the face of complex structural molds. The metal 3D printing technology can directly print a cooling water mold with a complex internal flow path structure, which greatly breaks through the limitations of traditional processing methods. This form cooling water mold can better balance the mold temperature, improve product quality, and significantly shorten the production cycle.

Metal 3D printing technology is able to precisely manufacture complex shaped mold parts by stacking materials layer by layer. Common metal 3D printing processes include powder bed fusion, adhesive injection, direct energy deposition, and material extrusion. Each of these processes has its own characteristics, but all can achieve efficient production while maintaining accuracy. For example, selective laser melting technology uses a high-power laser to completely melt a metal powder, creating dense and robust printed objects that are ideal for high-precision mold manufacturing in the aerospace and automotive industries.

In practical applications, metal 3D printing technology is often combined with traditional reduction processing methods to form graft printing technology. This technology can perform additive manufacturing composite processing on the base of traditional machining, and is mainly used for forming the cooling part of the mold insert separately, thereby reducing the internal stress of the product and avoiding the risk of deformation and cracking. The key to grafting printing is precise positioning, and the automatic grafting technology based on "machine vision" significantly improves the stability and accuracy of the process, making mold manufacturing more efficient and reliable.

Metal 3D printing technology, as a new tool for mold manufacturing, is gradually changing the face of this traditional industry with its unique advantages. With the continuous progress of technology and the continuous expansion of application fields, we have reason to believe that metal 3D printing will play an increasingly important role in the field of mold manufacturing and contribute more to the future development of manufacturing.