Markforged
Guhring Markforged
Cutting tool manufacturer Guhring UK has recorded significant weight, cost and time savings after additively manufacturing an H13 tool steel milling cutter.
The Birmingham-based company, a subsidiary of the Guhring Group, has invested in Markforged’s continuous carbon fibre and metal 3D printing technology, the former in an attempt to make prototyping more efficient and the latter to optimise the production of tools too.
Guhring has been manufacturing carbide and polycrystalline diamond (PCD) cutting tools for nearly 50 years, supplying made-to-order components for the likes of BMW, Jaguar Land Rover and Airbus. Typically, its PCD tools are manufactured by brazing ultra-high hardness diamond cutting tips onto bespoke hardened tool steel bodies, but with each component needing to be designed and approved by the customer, turnaround times are as long as two months.
While dealing with manufacturing giants like the aforementioned trio is beneficial, many small companies who require lower volumes cannot justify the costs involved with special tooling and therefore Guhring hasn’t been able to serve them. The company turned to additive manufacturing with the hope of ‘making the prototype cost and iterative cycle time come right down,’ according to Alan Pearce, PCD Production Supervisor at Guhring UK. Through Markforged’s UK partner, Mark3D UK, Guhring installed a carbon fibre platform to rapidly produce low-volume special tool prototypes and a Metal X to move into production of function tooling.
Markforged
Guhring Markforged
“Within one day, we had designed and printed a tool in Onyx and we could immediately see if we were going to come up against any problems manufacturing it. Within five days, we had printed and sintered a fully functional metal cutter body,” commented Pearce. “With Markforged additive manufacturing, we like to think we’re well on the road to being a factory of the future. Using Markforged 3D printers just speeds everything up.”
Having this 3D printing capacity in place, the company’s H13 tool steel milling cutter saw a 66% reduction in time, a 75% reduction in cost and a 60% reduction in weight thanks in part to a uniquely designed infill. Guhring’s engineers successfully ran the tool as a reamer to cut aluminium and also managed to change the configuration of the tool-tip geometry to run the tool as a milling cutter with an off-centre loading. The company has also sent off metal 3D printed cutting tools to its customers so they can test new concepts.
