TOOLING ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING SUPPORTS INNOVATIVE CUTTING TOOL DESIGN & PRODUCTION
Beginning of
a journey
The Markforged Mark
Two composite printer
allows both internal
teams and customers
to discuss proposed
tool designs
Based in Birmingham, Guhring UK is employing metal and composite 3D printing technology from
Markforged to help it develop special tooling for its customers on shorter lead times and with additional
technical advantages. Machinery has more
Part of world class manufacturer of
precision cutting tools Guhring
headquartered in Germany, the
Birmingham part of the business counts
itself within the over 8,000 employees
worldwide supporting a product range of
1,620 (in 44,000 sizes).
Boasting its own machine shop to
manufacture custom tools and a Technical
Academy to undertake machining trials and
training, Guhring UK has set out on a
3D-printing journey that is paying early
results and has much more yet to give.
As Alan Pearce, PCD production
supervisor at Guhring UK, points out:
“Modern industry is relentlessly working to
ever shorter lead times and as we are one of
the main partners in their production
process we have to do the same. Therefore,
anything we can do to shorten the design,
development and manufacture of special
tools is of bene t to everyone.
“We are always looking to reduce the
lead times associated with special tooling
and we’ve made good progress over the
years. We set ourselves a challenge to
outperform our competitors in this area,
whilst also trying to reduce the overall cost
of the development cycle – which is not a
simple task, by any means.”
Guhring split its additive project into two
areas, R&D and special tool production.
Pearce picks up the story: “The rst
requirement we identi ed was for
prototyping. We decided to use a 3D printer
to help with new concepts and to share our
designs. We didn’t realise quite how much
use we’d get out of this printer and now it’s
being used to support the UK production
facility with jigs and xtures, as well as
some custom machine tool parts, too.
“Secondly, we wanted to print special
cutting tool bodies in metal, which we could
integrated into our normal production
process. We had to be able to ship them as
part of our overall solution, directly to end
users. This was something that we felt
would be achievable with the right
technology, so we set out to nd it.
“Special tools are expensive and have
long lead times, so if we could achieve
savings in time and tool cost, we’d be on to
a winner. We also realised that we could
make tools with much more complex
geometry and increasingly radical coolant
pathways.”
Guhring chose to install a Markforged
Mark Two composite printer and a Metal X
3D printer in its technical academy, supplied
by UK agent Mark3D (https://is.gd/zinoho).
Initial prototypes are printed using the
Mark Two, meaning an engineer can have an
accurate representation of the tool very
quickly, supporting both internal and
customer discussions. This provides for
discussions about a proposed concept at
the earliest opportunity, validating, or
otherwise, initial thinking. Printed via a set
of standard settings, the resulting models
use a small amount of material and cost a
few pounds to produce. It’s now possible to
perform a dry run on machines with a plastic
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/zinoho)
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