Recent developments in metal laminated tooling

Abstract

Based on recent achievements in the field of Metal Laminated Tooling or MELATO® it can be confirmed that this unique technology contributes to enormous time and costs savings.There are special approaches for different manufacturing technologies. For metal sheet forming tools, main objective is to reduce the costs for tool making. Unlike to this, laminated injection molding or pressure die casting tools are designed to reduce time and costs for the actual manufacturing process. This is achieved by integration of conformal cooling systems. Besides the reduced injection cycle time, part distortions are minimized.The manufacturing process presented in this paper is based on multiple additive and subtractive technologies such as laser cutting, laser welding, clamping, casting, gluing, brazing and finish machining techniques. Diverse applications for laminated tools will be discussed as well.Based on recent achievements in the field of Metal Laminated Tooling or MELATO® it can be confirmed that this unique technology contributes to enormous time and costs savings.There are special approaches for different manufacturing technologies. For metal sheet forming tools, main objective is to reduce the costs for tool making. Unlike to this, laminated injection molding or pressure die casting tools are designed to reduce time and costs for the actual manufacturing process. This is achieved by integration of conformal cooling systems. Besides the reduced injection cycle time, part distortions are minimized.The manufacturing process presented in this paper is based on multiple additive and subtractive technologies such as laser cutting, laser welding, clamping, casting, gluing, brazing and finish machining techniques. Diverse applications for laminated tools will be discussed as well.