Desktop Metal announced it has qualified D2 tool steel for the Studio System™ 2, an accessible metal 3D printing platform that offers customers the easiest way to print high-performance metal parts in low volumes for pre-production and end-use applications. Desktop Metal is the first company to offer the material in a two-step bound metal additive manufacturing process, allowing customers to leverage a simple, nearly hands-free process to produce parts for high-strength D2 applications such as cold work metal forming tools, dies, punches, and injection molds with conformal cooling channels.
D2 is a versatile high-carbon, high-chromium air-hardening tool steel characterized by its high hardness and compressive strength after heat treatment. This tool steel offers extremely high wear resistance properties, dimensional stability, and corrosion resistance in the hardened condition, a key benefit for conformal cooling applications. D2 is used for a wide variety of cold work tools that require a combination of wear resistance and moderate toughness, such as coining and sizing tool members, blanking and forming dies, shear cutting tools, gauges, burnishing tools, and other wear parts.
Courtesy of Desktop Metal.