Hybrid Milling Machine Improves Cycle Times and Part Yields

Custom Mold & Design adds to its product offerings with the purchase of a Matsuura Lumex Avance-25 metal laser sintering hybrid milling machine, a powder bed metal additive manufacturing platform with subtractive machining capability. The machine produces accurate parts from melted and laser sintered melted powders, while precisely high-speed milling surfaces. This technology enables the ability to "grow" a metal component in layers with complex internal features.

Conformal-cooled injection mold-tool inserts produced with this hybrid process incorporate complex curved, shaped or spiral cooling channels and can be formed in small, narrow or awkwardly-shaped inserts. The result is mold tools with consistent and accurate cooling across the entire forming area, even within small or complex-shaped pockets. This technology also eliminates distortion problems and poor part quality from inefficient cooling, improving cycle times, part yields and initial part quality by utilizing the powder bed fusion process’s variable porosity capabilities to assist in venting mold gases in the flow front.