Metal Additive Manufacturing Conference 2018

Tools produced by metal Additive Manufacturing (AM) have been significantly increasing the last years, especially towards plastic moulding applications, due to the design innovation that the technology offers. The demand though from such tooling applications has been also increasing the levels of tribological performance and corrosion resistance for the tools, in order to process more complex composite materials. A solution to such demand is the surface modification of an AM produced tool to cope with these new requirements. In this context, the available information today on the behaviour and response of AM produced materials is limited. In the present study, a precipitation hardened stainless tool steel was subjected to various coating processes based on TiN, CrN, DLC and plasma nitriding treatments. The results have been compared to the conventionally produced counterpart of the tool steel in question, in terms of coating adhesion, corrosion resistance and mechanical performance. Advanced analytical and microscopic techniques were implemented for the characterization and evaluation of the analysed surfaces.