Mantle
Deep-ribbed medical device component mould insert printed with Mantle 420 Stainless Steel. This tool is ideal to fabricate with Mantle’s technology as 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.
Mantle has introduced a 420 Stainless Steel material for its P-200 metal 3D printing system for toolmaking.
This material, Mantle believes, will improve toolmaking process by enhancing speed and efficiency, while reducing labour requirements. It will be especially beneficial, according to the company, in industries that require corrosion-resistant tooling, such as healthcare.
The Mantle 420 Stainless Steel is said to be chemically equivalent to traditional 420 stainless steel, boasting high strength, hardness, corrosion resistance and polish ability. It is a preferred mould material for components that require conformal cooling channel and medical device tooling, with the material's excellent corrosion resistance helping to eliminate the concern of conformal cooling channels clogging due to rust.
“We are excited to launch this material and make it available for all of our customers, " said Ted Sorom, Mantle’s Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer. "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.”
"We are incredibly pleased with Mantle's introduction of their 420 Stainless Steel, a mould material critical in the medical device industry. This announcement emphasises Mantle’s commitment to the continuous improvement of their precision tooling technology,” added Melanie Sprague, SVP, Healthcare PMO and Applications at Spectrum Plastics Group, a DuPont Business. “We look forward to leveraging this material and the Mantle platform to continue providing our customers with the highest-quality medical devices.”
Mantle’s 420 Stainless Steel is the latest material in its family of Flowable Metal Pastes, which have been precisely tuned in a bid to produce 'best-in-class accuracy and surface finish.' Like all other Mantle steels, Mantle’s 420 Stainless Steel requires no modifications to toolmaking workflows for secondary operations such as texturing, polishing, welding, and machining. The material will be released to customers in the second half of 2024, with customers able to deploy the 420 Stainless Steel without any modifications to hardware; only an over-the-air software update is required.