Manufacturing and maintaining die-casting tools professionally is crucial to the foundry industry: As one of the most expensive assets, these tools play a decisive role in determining quality, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. Easily costing hundreds of thousands of euros, complex molds and inserts must be able to function over many years without interruption. They must also withstand extreme stress: In die casting, for example, the mold materials are exposed to temperatures of up to 700 °C, while the tools to mechanical forces of several hundred kilonewtons. Added to this are abrasive stresses on the tool surface and chemical attack by alloying elements in the casting materials. Thermal stresses and material fatigue lead to cracking, erosion, and abrasive wear. Even when the molds are designed optimally and manufactured carefully, their wear is an unavoidable factor that eventually means tools have to be replaced. If this occurs unexpectedly, it results in significant downstream costs.
The economic implications are significant: Every tool failure results in production downtime, additional setup times, and sometimes a manufacturer needs to produce new inserts or even entire tools. At the same time, manufacturers are under growing pressure to produce and operate molds both cost-effectively as well as sustainably. “In an industry where every minute of production time counts, we need processes that can extend tool lifecycles, reduce downtime, and optimize production processes from an environmental perspective,” explains Dr. Thomas Schopphoven, Head of the Laser Material Deposition Department at the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT in Aachen, Germany.
Traditional approaches, which commonly use high-alloy tool steels, are reaching their physical limits. Higher hardness and wear resistance often mean complex processing, long lead times, and high raw material costs. In addition to service life considerations, demands on flexibility in tool manufacturing are also increasing: Product modifications regularly require changes to mold inserts, gate systems, and cooling systems, which pose additional challenges for toolmakers.
The search for solutions must, therefore, go beyond existing strategies. Conventionally, tools are made of a single material, which limits their performance and makes them difficult to repair. Innovative manufacturing technologies such as Laser Material Deposition (LMD) enable users to repair tools, selectively coat areas subject to particularly high stress, and flexibly adapt geometries through hybrid additive manufacturing approaches. In this way, molds can be used for longer, adapted more quickly, and operated in a more resource-efficient manner. At a time when the circular economy is gaining increasing importance in industrial toolmaking, this technology offers enormous forward-looking potential.
Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT
