Material Solutions to Increase the Information Density in Mold-Based Production Systems

Abstract Production processes for the manufacturing of technical components are enabled by the availability and use of adequate engineering materials. Within the Internet of Production this work stream is dedicated to developing material and process-based solutions to increase the data availability during the manufacturing and operation of discontinuous mold-based production systems such as high-pressure die casting (HPDC) and injection molding (IM). This includes the development of data-driven alloy design strategies for additively manufactured mold components using tool steels as an initial use case as well as new surface-based smart sensor and actuator solutions. Material data and properties are tracked from the steel powder production via gas atomization until the final use in a mold to produce castings. Intermediate steps include the 3D printing of mold components via laser powder bed fusion and subsequent application of physical vapor deposition and thermal spraying-based smart multilayer coatings with sensor and actuator capabilities. The coating system is refined by selective laser patterning to facilitate the integration onto complex shape molding tool surfaces. Furthermore, molecular dynamics simulation-based methods are developed to derive material properties required for the modeling of polymer-based materials. By using this integrated methodology with the application of integrated computational materials engineering (ICME) methods from the metal powder for the mold printing up until the casting or molding process, the foundation for a holistic life cycle assessment within the integrated structural health engineering (ISHE) framework is laid for the produced tooling systems as well as the molded parts.