Mike Shellabear, Joseph Weilhammer EOS GmbH 1. Introduction EOSINT M systems manufacture solid metal parts by locally melting and resolidifying metal powder using a focussed laser beam, layer by layer, to build up the desired geometry fully automatically from 3D CAD data. Because metal powder is turned directly into solid metal parts, the production process is known as Direct Metal Laser-Sintering (DMLS). Depending on the powder material and processing parameters used, a wide range of part properties can be obtained, from controlled porosity for venting or filtering, up to fully dense structures with strength superior to cast or forged components. The layer-wise production enables even highly complex geometries to be manufactured directly, often eliminating the need for milling paths or EDM, and provides a unique freedom of design. Tooling has been the main application of EOSINT M technology for at least the first decade since its commercial launch in 1995. This application is known as DirectTool due to the very short process chain, which enables tooling components to be manufactured in a very short time. For this reason, early users concentrated on “Rapid Tooling”, i.e. using the technology to reduce the lead time for tooling. In the early years only relatively soft materials were available, so that mostly prototype tooling for plastics processing was produced, but with continual improvement of the technology the application range has extended to series production tooling for plastics and also tooling for metals processing. In addition to the “rapid” aspect, the focus has shifted more to using the unique geometric possibilities of the technology to design “advanced tooling”, for example by integrating conformal cooling channels into tooling to improve quality and economics in production. Today EOSINT M tools are being used for example to injection mould millions of plastic parts and to die cast tens of thousands of metal parts. This white paper gives an overview of how and why EOSINT M technology is used in tooling applications, focussing in particular on the most common application, injection moulding.
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