Manufacturing tools having a base and a working surface, such as trim
steels, flange steels and die inserts, are formed by fabricating or
casting a substrate out of a relatively ductile, low wear-resistant metal
and forming the working surfaces such as cutting edges, flanging
surfaces, die surfaces and die inserts by depositing layers of relatively
hard, wear-resistant materials to the substrate by closed-loop
direct-metal deposition or laser cladding. A multi-axis numerically
controlled robot may be used to position and move a beam and deposition
material over large substrates in forming such tooling.
