Thursday, February 9, 2017

3DP technology to manufacture carbide molds

Carbide, a composite of fine grained hardmetals made of bonded metal hardmetals, is a very hard material that is often used in the mechanical and automotive engineering and building materials industries. Carbide die is the life of steel mold ten times or even several times, carbide mold high hardness, high strength, corrosion resistance, high temperature and the expansion coefficient is small, generally using tungsten cobalt carbide.
Carbide hardness is too high, the conventional processing is grinding, using a diamond wheel, polished with a fine point of the wheel. The hole can only be used in general electric erosion machining, such as EDM, or wire cutting, or even use electrolytic grinding technology.
Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany have succeeded in producing carbide dies using 3DP adhesive jet-jet 3D printing technology. 3D Science Valley has learned that these 3D printing carbide dies have a much greater geometrical trough freedom than conventional methods to produce more complex geometries.
As experts in the field of cemented carbide, Fraunhofer Institute for decades for the manufacture of ceramic cemented carbide molds by uniaxial or cold isostatic pressing, these materials are mainly made of tungsten carbide. Despite the high reliability of these molds, the Fraunhofer Institute still faces the problem of the limitations of traditional manufacturing processes when creating complex geometries, such as internal helical or tortuous cooling ducts.
Now, with 3DP prints of cemented carbide powder, the Institute can easily create complex designs. 3DP is an adhesive jet printing technology in which powder particles of ceramic hard materials, including tungsten carbide particles, are printed by laminating layers of cobalt, nickel or iron. This adhesive material is not only an adhesive between the powder layers, but also allows the product to have good mechanical properties and can produce fully dense components, and even can be selectively adjusted flexural strength, toughness and hardness.
Subsequent treatments, including sintering, yielded the compactness of cemented carbide molds consistent with traditional processing methods. The Fraunhofer Institute believes that this process has a broader scope for expansion, including the uniform distribution of tungsten powder into the cemented carbide, which can be used to produce high-performance cutting tools.
Carbide in addition to mold, a wider range of uses is used as a tool material, such as turning, milling cutter, planer, drill, boring tool for cutting iron, nonferrous metals, plastics, chemical fiber, graphite, glass, Stone and ordinary steel, can also be used to cut heat-resistant steel, stainless steel, high manganese steel, tool steel and other difficult to process materials. The future, 3DP technology will be applied to the field of carbide cutting tool production, perhaps for the production of small quantities of special tools it is not impossible, 3D Science Valley will continue to focus on.

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