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Creating Conformal Cooling Channels



Mold and mold base for gas caps application with cooling channels shaped to be close to the part in a snaking pattern (tilted within the block). These cooling channels cannot be drilled, making additive manufacturing essential.

Photo Credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Additive manufacturing provides a solution to incorporate conformal cooling channels to an injection mold screw.

Photo Credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory

OPEN MIND Technologies offers hyperMILL Additive Manufacturing, which has a wide range of capabilities for additive and hybrid processes, including the ability to create additive toolpaths from all available toolpath strategies. This functionality is productive for directed-energy deposition (DED) processes for additive/hybrid manufacturing in a multi-axis machining or robot delivery system set-up.

Multi-axis application examples where having access to all available toolpaths is a key advantage, such as embedding conformal cooling channels into a mold. The conformal channels are typically positioned at a uniform distance within the mold. Another use case involves designing geometric features (zigzag, for example) to generate cooling changes that are not manufacturable by standard methods such as traditional deep-hole drilling techniques. Since powder or wire deposition needs to adhere to a base material, multi-axis orientation control is critical to building organically shaped channels. Furthermore, regarding hybrid platforms, final subtractive machining operations can occur in the same set-up as the additive processes. This also allows the engineer to interleave additive and subtractive operations, which increases the breadth of additive applications.

Two applications where hyperMILL Additive Manufacturing toolpaths were used for creating conformal cooling channels in molds include a mold with multiple gas caps, and the second an injection mold screw. The assemblies, including the shaped channels, have been confirmed with metallurgical tests for material properties. The conformal cooling channels have also passed initial tests regarding fluid dynamics.

For more information contact:

OPEN MIND Technologies USA, Inc.

1492 Highland Ave., Unit 3

Needham, MA 02492

888-516-1232

info.americas@openmind-tech.com

www.openmind-tech.com

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