420 Stainless Steel Produces Production-Grade Tooling Faster

Mantle, provider of metal 3D printing technology for toolmaking, has released its 420 Stainless Steel material. This material addition is engineered to improve toolmaking processes, enhancing speed and efficiency while reducing labor requirements, which is especially beneficial in industries such as medical that require corrosion- resistant tooling.

Mantle's 420 Stainless Steel is chemically equivalent to traditional 420 stainless steel, which features high strength, hardness, corrosion resistance and polish ability. It is a preferred mold material for a wide range of tooling applications, including components with conformal cooling and medical device tooling. Mantle's 420 Stainless Steel allows manufacturers to rapidly produce production-grade tooling during prototyping and product development, thereby shortening the time to produce steel tooling for validation part molding by as much as 80%.

"We are excited to launch this material and make it available for all of our customers," said Ted Sorom, Mantle's co-founder and CEO. "By combining the speed and cost reductions enabled by Mantle's tooling-focused printing system with 420 stainless steel, we help our customers set a new standard for the speed of their product development."

Mantle's 420 Stainless Steel is especially beneficial for tooling applications that employ conformal cooling channels. "These channels, only achievable through additive manufacturing (AM), enable more efficient cooling than traditional cooling methods, improving molding performance and reducing cycle times," said a company spokesperson. "Mantle's 420 Stainless Steel has excellent corrosion resistance and eliminates the concern of conformal cooling channels clogging due to rust."

Examples of key applications in 420 Stainless Steel include:

• Deep-ribbed medical device component mold insert printed with Mantle 420 Stainless Steel. This tool is ideal to fabricate with Mantle's technology since the deep ribs would otherwise have required extensive sinker-EDM work, adding substantial cost and time. With Mantle, the insert can be printed in just 2.5 days.
• Medical luer fitting mold insert printed with Mantle 420 Stainless Steel. Twelve tool variations can be printed, fully unattended, in just 3.5 days.

For more information contact:

Mantle Inc.

1950 Cesar Chavez St.

San Francisco, CA 94124

415-655-3555

www.mantle3d.com