A Case Study of Arc-Spray Tooling Process for Production of Sheet Metal Forming Dies

Molds and dies are conventionally manufactured by machining from bulk metallic materials. Tooling by arc spray process to spray metal directly onto a master pattern is an alternative method to manufacture tools for plastic injection molding and other applications.

This process is progressed through several steps of preparation of master pattern, arc spraying, back-filling and final machining. This paper shows each steps of the arc spray tooling process practiced in RIST. Three metal sheet forming dies were made to test the performance of the tools made by arc spray tooling process. One of them has a simple shape just for the first metal sheet forming test. Another one is a kind of deep drawing die set for an oil pan shaped metal sheet component. Last one is a die for production of a car component called “low arm”.

Generally they were performed well for metal forming of dozens of metal sheets and they are not applied in a mass production line yet. This tooling process shows promising results but some of the properties have to be improved like dimensional accuracy etc.