Desktop Metal®, a leader in mass production and turnkey additive manufacturing solutions, has qualified the D2 Tool Steel for the Production System™ platform, which leverages patent-pending Single Pass Jetting™ (SPJ) technology designed to achieve the fastest build speeds in the metal additive manufacturing industry.
Desktop Metal’s mission is to make industrial-grade 3D printing accessible to all engineers, designers and manufacturers. With D2 Tool Steel, they can now leverage single pass jetting technology for the production of parts in high-strength, high-temperature applications such as cold work metal forming tools, dies, and punches as well as injection molds with conformal cooling channels.
What is great about D2 Tool Steel?
D2 tool steel is a versatile high-carbon, high-chromium air-hardening tool steel characterized by its high hardness and compressive strength after heat treatment. This tool steel also offers extremely high wear resistance properties, dimensional stability, and corrosion resistance in the hardened condition, a key benefit for conformal cooling applications.
“Our materials science team is constantly working to develop new materials and processes to make 3D printing accessible to all industries and applications,” said Jonah Myerberg, co-founder and CTO of Desktop Metal. “We are responding to the demand from our customers across manufacturing and industrial industries for materials like D2 tool steel that enable the production of critical forming and cutting tools, and in various other applications where high hardness is valued.”
Applications
D2 is used for a wide variety of cold work tools that require a combination of wear resistance and moderate toughness, such as coining and sizing tool members, blanking and forming dies, shear cutting tools, gauges, burnishing tools, and other wear parts.
These cams are used in oil and gas or chemical processing applications to convert rotary motion into reciprocating linear motion in a machine. Traditionally, these parts would have required multiple manufacturing steps, beginning with CNC machining and followed by broaching of the spline on a separate machine. Binder jetting enables the production of cams in a single printing step, reducing both the cost and lead time of the part, while also supporting the production of numerous cam sizes in a single build to accommodate different machines, all without any fixturing or tooling required. D2 tool steel is critical for this application because of its hardness and corrosion resistance, which ensures a longer lifetime as the cam mechanically interacts with a sliding pin. In addition, because these components are often integrated into machines operating in harsh environments, the corrosion resistance provided by D2 ensures that the parts will perform as intended and not deteriorate.
About the Production Systems™
The P-1 and P-50 Production Systems from Desktop Metal are the first metal 3D printers designed for mass production. Powered by single-pass binder-jetting technology, they enable the speed, quality, and cost-per-part needed to compete with traditional manufacturing processes.
Production System utilizes a new approach to metal 3D printing called Single Pass Jetting (SPJ) which builds metal parts in a matter of minutes instead of hours.