Opportunities and challenges of profile extrusion dies produced by additive manufacturing processes

The design and manufacture of profile extrusion dies is characterised by costly running-in trials. Significant cost and time savings can be achieved by replacing the experimental running-in trials by virtual ones. A simulative optimisation, however, often leads to complex, free-formed flow channels. A feasible manufacture of such dies is only possible with additive manufacturing processes such as the Selective Laser Melting (SLM). Against this background, the manufacture of profile extrusion dies by SLM is investigated. A major challenge is to ensure a specific surface quality of the extruded plastics profiles. The roughness of SLM surfaces does not meet the high demands that are placed on the surface quality of extrusion dies. Therefore, in case of the SLM die a concept for the surface finishing of the flow channel is required, which can be applied to arbitrarily shaped geometries. For this purpose, plastics profiles are extruded both with a conventionally and an additively manufactured die. In case of t...