Metal Additive Manufacturing Conference - MAMC 2020

Due to the continuously growing variety of products in response to the increasing customer demand for individuality, strict time and cost targets must be achieved in toolmaking. New manufacturing techniques are being researched and integrated into the production process to reduce tool manufacturing costs. The Laser Metal Deposition process (LMD) has already established itself as a flexible additive manufacturing process for geometry changes and repairs in tool making. A new approach is the hybrid-additive manufacturing of entire tool components using LMD. Potential here lies in the reduction of variants of semi-finished products and material savings through topology-optimized component design. For the example of a cutting tool, powder with low hardness is used for the base unit and powder with high hardness for the active element. In this regard, the mechanical properties of the used powder materials, and the connection strength to the substrate material need to be investigated. Therefore cylindrical specimens for tensile tests are manufactured. Furthermore, samples are analyzed metallographically to establish suitable process parameter windows for materials with different carbon contents.