The Challenge

A major manufacturer of industrial packaging machinery was struggling with a bottleneck in their plastic injection molding line. They were producing a complex, thick-walled cylindrical component. Using traditional straight-drilled cooling lines inside the mold caused uneven heat dissipation. This resulted in long cooling cycles (over 45 seconds per part) and frequent part warpage upon ejection, leading to an unacceptably high defect rate.

The Printreal 3D Solution

Traditional machining cannot create curved cooling channels that follow the internal geometry of a mold. Additive manufacturing can.

Primary Process: We engineered and 3D printed a replacement mold core insert using SLM technology with Tool Steel (MS1 / Maraging Steel).

Engineering Innovation: The new insert featured complex conformal cooling channels—internal water pathways that continuously hugged the 3D contours of the plastic part at a uniform distance of 3mm.

Finishing: After printing, the insert underwent specialized heat treatment to reach maximum hardness, followed by precision CNC grinding to ensure a flawless mirror finish on the molding surface.

The Result

Increased Output: The highly efficient heat transfer reduced the cooling cycle time from 45 seconds to just 29 seconds—a 35% increase in production efficiency.

Zero Defects: The uniform temperature distribution completely eliminated the thermal warpage issue, dropping the scrap rate to near zero.

Durability: The dense MS1 steel insert proved robust enough to withstand hundreds of thousands of injection cycles without degradation.