Design limits of unbonded laminate tooling for pressure die-casting

This paper describes a new concept for the construction of prototype tooling specifically for pressure die-casting. The tools are made by clamping together laser-cut profiles in H13 tool steel sheet. The result of this endeavour has been the creation of a low cost, flexible, scalable and robust tooling system for design validation that allows multiple design iterations to be examined on the actual pressure die-casting equipment used in the production environment. Work to date has shown that relatively large up-standing features can withstand the forces of molten metal during injection.