Sodick exhibits addictive manufacturing/milling centre at TCT 16

The OPM250L has been developed to provide particular benefits in the design and manufacture of plastic injection mould tools, combining the ability of additive manufacturing to create cooling channels of optimum shape and geometry, which cannot be machined by conventional means, with the high speed milling necessary for tool finishing.

This new machine enables the creation of forms exactly as the engineers and/or designers have created them in their minds, without the need for compromise due to the constraints of conventional machining capabilities, complicated setups and dedicated tools.

The OPM250L operates as follows: first, a metal powder is uniformly coated and then melted and solidified by scanning with a laser beam (this process can be repeated up to ten times) after which the surface is subjected to high speed milling with a rotary tool, creating the high quality accuracy, precision and finish which are not achievable with a laser process alone, after which the metal powder is uniformly coated again and the process is repeated, until the geometry is complete.

Sodick Europe www.sodick.org