Wes Byleveld has grown accustomed to delivering sales pitches from the bottom up. For Exco Engineering's automotive customers, the bottom line is that additively manufactured die cast components can give them a distinct competitive advantage. In addition to this, he states that the mechanical performance of inserts and water jackets printed with maraging steel, which is suitable for sintering via the powder-bed fusion (PBF) process, is equal to or better than the mechanical performance of H13 tool steel, if not better. He presents years' worth of research that supports his claims, which he supports with thermal stress simulations and real-world testing..

Exco, where Byleveld serves as director of additive manufacturing (AM), is the largest high-pressure die cast tool builder in North America. It is a pitch that Byleveld has made with considerable success. Additive manufacturing is frequently associated with environmental sustainability, but why is this so? And how can organizations...
Exco's Byleveld and his team of additive champions appear to be quietly altering the definition of what "production" means when it comes to 3D-printed components for the automotive industry as a result of their achievements.

As a result of Byleveld and Exco Additive's work, several powertrain, body, and structural components currently on the road or expected to be on the road in the near future will almost certainly be manufactured using 3D-printed die casting tools. The way Exco has integrated metal 3D printing into one of the harshest manufacturing environments imaginable is more impressive — and more important to the way we think about additive manufacturing's role in today's industrial environment. As Byleveld explains, it all began with a simple curiosity on his part.

In his 15 years with Exco Engineering, Wes Byleveld started in the company's die cast department, where he worked on robotic programming projects for aluminum alloy die casting process and workflow issues."It was more out of curiosity than out of necessity," he explains. Although Byleveld claims he was given broad latitude to integrate additive manufacturing into Exco's production tools after an initial round of positive benchmarking tests — fueled by the potential to drastically reduce temperatures via 3D-printed conformal cooling channels — he says he has been given limited latitude to do so.

Die casting on an industrial scale, which is the process of forcing molten metal into a mold cavity under extremely high pressure, is an extremely inhospitable environment for metal powder-based 3D printing. Exco's Toronto facility contains 130,000 square feet of heavy-duty machine tools, including a 4000-ton high pressure die cast machine and three massive furnaces. Exco's facility in Toronto also houses a 4000-ton high pressure die cast machine. Exco manufactures the dies and tooling for these parts, not the actual parts themselves, to be clear about this. One such die is a V8 engine block die, which can weigh hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Die inserts, as the name implies, are inserted into a pocket of a die after it has been finished. Because of the geometric complexity of die inserts, they are machined separately. The use of machining inserts as stand-alone components allows the cutting tool to access the external faces of a part, but the geometry of internal cooling channels is still limited to basic linear shapes.

To be honest, the process of seeking out a 3D printer that was capable of producing automotive die casting services parts, let alone one that could survive in an automotive die casting environment, proved to be a difficult one. Byleveld chose an engine block water jacket as a benchmark part because it has a thick base and extremely thin walls, making it an excellent comparison."If you can build this part for us, we'll buy your machine," Byleveld stated in an email to several 3D printer OEMs. A spokesperson for EOS said, "EOS was the only company that accepted the challenge and stated that they were committed to succeeding no matter what it took."

Zinc Die Castinghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3Z3PCtQN4A

The Aluminum Die Casting Processhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARGjcaYJ9Lo

Die Casting Process Aluminum Zinc - KenWalt Die Casting Companyhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtGuojDlGhw