With the goal of enabling tool rooms to automate their toolmaking process by producing sharp corners and edges, Mantle, a manufacturer developing metal 3D printing for toolmaking, has recently unveiled a High-Precision Shaping package. The latter includes 0.006” and 0.010” ball mill cutting tools and automated toolpathing software.

Thanks to this High-Precision Shaping package, the manufacturer removes EDM and other toolmaking operations, helping tool rooms reduce the time required to produce mold tools by up to 75%.

“At Mantle, our goal is to help tool rooms increase the number of complex mold tools they produce while reducing the time, cost, and labor to produce them,” commented Ted Sorom, Mantle CEO and co-founder. “By deploying our new High-Precision Shaping capabilities, our customers can produce steel tools faster than ever – without requiring programming, setup, and operator time from overworked toolmakers.”

As a reminder, Mantle’s TrueShape™ technology combines 3D printing of its tool steel pastes with traditional CNC machining to refine the shape of printed tools and deliver accuracy, surface finish, and tool steel properties unmatched in the metal 3D printing industry. Mantle’s 3D printer is built on a trusted CNC platform and utilizes multiple cutting mills to refine the shape of the printed tool while it is still in a soft state. Mantle’s new High-Precision Shaping package enables tool rooms to produce tools with radii under 0.003″ (0,007 cm), a 70% improvement compared to the .010″ (0,02 cm) radii previously attainable, thereby eliminating more of the costly and time-consuming EDM operations of traditional toolmaking.

“Mantle will allow us to reduce our need for offshore tooling, which introduces scheduling and supply chain risk, with comparable pricing. With Mantle’s H13 tool steel and new High-Precision Shaping capabilities, we can print tools in-house and deliver complex molded parts to our customers weeks faster than before,” Eric Derner, Technical Sales Applications Engineer at Nicolet Plastics, an injection molder comments.

This announcement follows the recent launch of its F-200 furnace to complete the production capability of the TrueShape™ technology.

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