Technology-based assessment of subtractive machining processes for mold manufacture

Due to an increase in quality as well as flexibility demands in current mold manufacture there is a high technology-driven need for a comprehensive evaluation of different process alternatives. Especially surface integrity nowadays plays a key role for achieving the same part functionality especially when different machining alternatives are principally available. Therefore, in this paper different manufacturing processes are compared to each other by the example of a defined mold cavity out of hardened and tempered cold working steel 45NiCrMo16. Boundary conditions are a specified depth and a target surface finish (defined roughness) as typically defined in die and mold industry. Besides conventional Grinding and Sinking EDM also alternative manufacturing technologies like Laser-based machining and Milling are taken into account for the process benchmark. Based on the technological analysis an overview is derived, which also allows an economical assessment of the different machining strategies.