Additive manufacturing offers the possibility of producing geometrically complex components that cannot be manufactured by conventional machining routes. Due to this advantage, additive manufacturing is already being used in many fields of application such as medical technology or aviation. In general tooling for example, additive manufacturing can be used to realize optimized cooling channels, which can increase the production rate. However, there is currently a lack of tool steels that can be processed crack-free via additive manufacturing. As a result of their good processability, maraging steels such as 1.2709 have established as tool steels for additive manufacturing. These steels however are free from carbides, which results in lower wear properties than typical carbon tool steels.

In the present work, it is shown how the tool steel 1.2083 can be optimized for use in additive manufacturing by an adapted chemical composition. The developed alloy can be easily processed in the Laser Powder Bed Fusion process and offers a hardness of 53 HRC already in the as-built condition. Furthermore, the tempering behavior is identical to that of 1.2083. Thus it is possible to produce additively manufactured components with properties comparable to a conventional carbon tool steel in mold making.