The tech is interesting because they found a technology that connected with Sorom’s background in manufacturing. When the duo started printing in low-carbon steel, Sorom immediately realized that there would be a very important niche that could use this tech. Instead of using the 3D printer to print low-volume parts (as, say, automotive manufacturers tend to do) or prototype parts (as every manufacturer does these days), they would instead be using the 3D printers to create parts crucial to the mass-manufacturing process, whether that’s stamping dies or injection molding tools. Both need extremely precise surface finishes and longevity.

The challenge with using reverse profiling is ensuring that the workpiece doesn’t get pulled out of the chuck from the axial forces. Part geometry and setup play significant roles in determining if reverse profiling makes sense.

“Machine tool capabilities are important to understand,” said Garud. “On the hardware side, a rigid setup is important. You don’t want long overhangs. The rest of it can be managed through depth of cut, corner radii, and basic process parameters. A CAM program also will likely be necessary. If it is a simple undercut, this can most often be done manually. But typically with profiles, the complexity requires a good CAM system.”

“I was introduced to my co-founder who had started printing with silver conductive traces that were used to connect the backside of solar panels. From there, he started to try to print a physical object, not just the traces. When he started printing silver, I wasn’t interested in starting a jewelry company,” recalls Ted Sorom, CEO and co-founder at Mantle, excitedly sharing the genesis of the company. “About a month and a half later, he was printing low-carbon steel on very inexpensive equipment before anybody else had gotten close to doing that. I joined him to bring the technology to market back in 2015. We’ve been developing the technology for the last six years.”

Lindsay Luminoso, sr. editor/digital editor, contributes to both Canadian Metalworking and Canadian Fabricating & Welding. She worked as an associate editor/web editor, at Canadian Metalworking from 2014-2016 and was most recently an associate editor at Design Engineering.

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“When profiling, you are using the 35-degree angle going towards the spindle, using one cutting edge,” said Garud. “When reverse profiling and moving away from the spindle, you are using the other cutting edge. That’s a significant tool life advantage. Secondly, it can save a lot of time because you are not rapiding out then coming back in.”

This is why setup is one of the biggest factors determining success for reverse profiling. Without a strong and proper setup, both the tool and workpiece face forces that can make this operation impossible to complete.

If your workpiece has a complicated profile with varying features, like a chamfer, undercut, taper, or curves, you will need multiple axes of motion. Walter Tools

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In traditional turning operations, the cuttings tool moves towards the chuck and spindle rather than away from it. This is because, typically, the cut should always travel in the strongest direction. A typical setup will feature a chuck, which is where the workpiece is held tightly, which is the strongest part of the machine tool. All of the cutting forces are absorbed in the axial direction into the chuck and spindle of the machine.

“Reverse profiling is very good for avoiding chip packing in blind bores,” said King. “It also makes chip evacuation easier as it naturally directs chips out of the bore.”

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“There are a few things to watch out for,” said Garud. “It’s important to be careful when going up to a shoulder when moving away from the spindle. You also have to manage the exit of the tool so that you are not crimping chips between the shoulder and the insert. Depending on the condition, you can back off from the cut in a 45-degree angle when you are rapiding out. Then you can come back and do a finishing pass later, especially if you have multiple passes going toward the shoulder.”

You might ask yourself, “why don’t we just 3D-print these molds?” and the answer to that is complicated — the tools need to be extremely hard-wearing, precise, temperature-tolerant and the surface finish needs to be nigh-on perfect. There aren’t a lot of 3D printing technologies that tick all the boxes, but that’s exactly the space where Mantle is, erm, injecting itself.

“Surface finish, tolerances and material durability requirements in the tooling space are extreme,” Sorom volunteers. “These tools are used millions of cycles to mass produce products. We’ve created a technology that the portion of the injection mold where the plastic hits the metal right. The insert that creates the final part. The materials we print today is similar to P20 tool steel — we call it P2x. The other is H13 steel.”

The technique for printing is really interesting as well. The company has developed an FDM-style process — much like the filament printers you may have seen from MakerBot etc. — that uses a paste-like material that uses a liquid carrier that carries metal powders. After printing a layer, the company goes through a drying process that gets rid of the liquid component, resulting in a densely packed body of metal powders. After 10 layers or so, the process then uses a high-speed cutting tool (much like a CNC mill) to cut away tiny amounts of the material, which creates the surface finish and tolerances needed. That happens every 10 layers or so.

There are many advantages of reverse profiling. For example, in many cases, a V-style insert is used for profiling. These diamond-shaped inserts are very sharp and have a very narrow 35-degree included angle.

Lead angle plays an important role in chip development. For applications using a V-style insert with a conventional profiling lead angle is 107.5 degrees, that lead angle suddenly becomes 35 degrees with reverse profiling.

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In many cases, the part itself will determine if reverse profiling makes sense. If it’s a simple cylindrical workpiece that requires the removal of 0.05 in. of material, then it doesn’t make sense to profile.

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“This tilts the cutting edge quite a bit, which means that chips become very thin using that same feed rate,” said Garud. “To make up for that chip thinning, the feed rate needs to be increased, almost sometimes 50 to 60 per cent higher than traditional profiling. This can be an advantage because you are taking out material that much faster and potentially expanding the tool life using both sides of the insert.”

“It’s really an opposite thought process for programmers and operators,” said King. “Pull from chuck versus push toward the chuck changes axial forces, and chips flow differently. Reverse profiling pulls on the part and pulls on tools, which could result in pulling the cutting tool out of its holder or pulling the stock out of the chuck.”

King added that while both types of profiling have equal cutting parameters, the biggest drivers for choosing reverse profiling are chip evacuation and finished part geometry.

The experts agree that reverse profiling is often associated with ID work. Part of the reason for this is because chip evacuation can be challenging in a bore. Birdnesting that occurs on the OD is manageable. However, with birdnesting that occurs with ID work, chips don’t easily come out and you risk damaging the insert because it will recut the chips.

While both types of profiling are equal in cutting parameters, the biggest drivers for choosing reverse profiling are chip evacuation and finished part geometry. THINBIT

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“That is how we are able to get a product that has the surface finish and detail to go directly from the 3D printer into an application,” Sorom says. “That’s where we save a ton of time and cost for our customers. We’re seeing about a 70% reduction in the time to create these type of inserts and a 50% reduction in cost.”

The depth of cut with any type of profiling tends to be much smaller than roughing, medium, or finishing depth of cuts. However, the depth of cut should be more than the corner radius of the insert.

Mantle is launching a new series of $350,000 machines that can 3D-print the mold inserts that are used to produce injection-mold plastics. It’s hard to overstate how important this will be — I caught up with the company’s founders to find out how and why this tech is going to put a serious dent in the speed-to-market for manufacturing.

“There is tooling designed to both profile and reverse profile,” he said. “This is known as multidirectional profiling. If this method is employed, cutting cycle times can be reduced.”

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“If it's a complicated profile with varying features, like a chamfer, undercut, taper, or curves, all of these features on a workpiece typically suggested that you will need multiple axes of motions,” said Sarang Garud, product manager, turning/drilling/boring, Walter Tools, Waukesha, Wis. “This is where reverse profiling makes sense. It’s also very common for ID boring to have internal profiles, so we see reverse profiling in those applications too.”

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The machine solutions will cost around $350,000, which might sound expensive, but for the metal fabrication shops that make tooling, this is roughly in line with the EDM and high-end CNC machines they already use. They also operate in industries where a $350,000 machine to cut production time by 70% is an absolute bargain, so it’ll be interesting to see the adoption of these machines out in the world. Delivery of the first production systems is planned for the first half of 2023.

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Now, if you’re not enough of a tool steel nerd to know what P20 and H13 are, these are two of the commonly used steel types for injection molding uses, which can be used hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of times before they need to be replaced.

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“If coolant is used, it should always be applied to direct chips away from the cutting area,” said King. “Cutting geometry is on the trailing side of the cutting edge, which also is the side of the toolholder body. Cutting depth and chip clearance all need to be verified.”

For example, many components requiring complex profiling, including contours, chamfers, and undercuts, tend to be produced at high volumes where there is a high demand for reduced cutting time.

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While injection-molded parts can be made by the tens of thousands in a negligible amount of time, the tools can take weeks, especially if your company is small enough that it doesn’t have dedicated toolmaking resources. Six to eight weeks is common, and during the global pandemic, I’ve heard quotes of up to 12 weeks. A three-month delay in manufacturing that can’t be worked around easily is, obviously, a nightmare.

“At the end of the process, we have a body of densely packed metal powders held together by a tiny bit of glue or binder. We put it into a furnace and densify it into a solid metal part,” explains Sorom. “It’s a two-step process. We print and shape in one machine and then sinter the part in a furnace.”

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Okay, let’s go deeply geeky for a moment, and take a look at one of the most interesting uses of 3D printing I’ve seen in a long while. To understand why this matters so much, you need to understand how manufacturing works; specifically, how injection molding works. Most plastic parts can be made by the hundreds of thousands, by injecting liquid plastic goo into a mold. This mold typically has water-cooling lines running through it, to bring down the temperature of the liquid, molten plastic quickly, so it solidifies. The mold opens, the plastic part is ejected, and you can go to the next cycle. Almost every small (and many large) plastic parts are made this way. The tools are usually made of extra hard “tool steel,” which needs to be extremely precise. The surface of this steel mold can be anything — smooth, textured, you name it — and anything that’s part of the mold cavity becomes part of the final plastic part. As you might imagine, creating these steel molds is extremely precise work, and it takes a long time (years) to become a tool maker. To become a truly excellent tool maker is a lifelong profession, at least as much art and experience as it is technology.

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“Turning (OD) and boring (ID) are terms used to change the diameter of a plain cylinder (OD) or hole (ID),” said Ken King, chief operating officer, THINBIT, Fort Wayne, Ind. “In profiling operations, the cutting tool is used to create shapes and complex grooves in a workpiece. Profiling and turning/boring operations are similar operations. Generally, we define reverse profiling as moving the cutting tool away from the chuck or collet while cutting.”

The cool thing about doing it this way is that CNC machines are extremely good at getting high-precision parts, but the challenge is that the tool steel is so hard, that the CNC machine’s cutting tools cut it only very slowly. By shaping the parts before sintering, the company gets the best of both worlds: they do the precision shaping on a much softer material, and then “bake” the part to harden it afterward.

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