State of the Art on Additive Manufacturing of Moulding Dies with Conformal Cooling Channels

The cooling system of the mould/die plays a vital role in terms of part quality and cycle time during the production process. Conventional cooling channels are often drilled straight holes with limited geometric complexity causing restricted cooling fluid mobility within the mould. Additive manufacturing enables the designing of a complex cooling system conforming to the mould geometry. These channels ‘conform’ to any shape for optimum efficiency. In this paper, the conformal cooling channel (CCC) parameters like channel profile, geometry, layout, etc., are designed and simulated using software based on computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided engineering (CAE). The process parameters of the mould with CCCs are optimized using dedicated software like Moldflow Insight and Moldflow Advisor. After optimizing the cooling performance numerically, an appropriate additive manufacturing process based on mould material and channel support material is selected for 3D printing of mould/die. The experimental cooling performance of mould with CCCs is then compared with the mould without cooling channels. Experimental results have shown reduced cycle time with uniform part temperature distribution leading to defect-free cost-effective production.