How Additive Manufacturing Is Changing Hydraulic Servo Valves and Injection Molding Performance
July 15, 2026
Additive vs Subtractive Manufacturing
NEW Hänchen Safety Catcher
Servo Valve Technology in Injection Molding
Which Model is Right for Injection Control?
Our President’s Fluid Power History
What Engineers Can Learn from Domin’s Adoption of Additive Manufacturing
Domin is a leading example for how additive manufacturing can improve hydraulic component design. Through 3D metal printing, Domin has created valves with faster step response, lower weight, higher flow, better efficiency, and shorter lead times.
As companies face pressure to shorten lead times, increase product efficiency, and meet low weight requirements, additive manufacturing offers a new way to consider how we design and create products.
Traditional vs Additive Manufacturing
For decades, subtractive manufacturing processes have dominated fluid power production. CNC milling and turning operations shape and carve out the metal blocks that become the housings for pumps and actuators. Flow distribution and pathways are drilled into the valve bodies and manifold blocks. In all these processes, material is removed to form these intricate components.
Benefits of Subtractive Manufacturing
One key advantage of the conventional manufacturing is its durability.
In testing environments, engineers leverage CNC machining and honing techniques to create cylinders with high frequency bandwidth with minimal friction and stick-slip. Cylinder housings are cut from a solid block of steel to create a rigid and uniform build. The bores are then honed and refined for a very effective seal. This level of precision and rigidity ensures good, clean data.
While subtractive manufacturing has earned its merit for creating incredibly reliable, precise, and structurally sound components, it comes with limitations.
Limitations of Subtractive Manufacturing
Subtractive processes generate excess waste and often require multiple discrete parts that need to be assembled. This adds to the cost and time of production, fabrication, and assembly, slowing down supply chains and extending lead times.
More modernized manufacturing approaches, like 3D printing (via additive manufacturing) address these limitations by reducing component waste and weight, improving efficiency through optimized internal designs, and speeding up prototyping and development.
Where Additive Manufacturing Improves Hydraulic Components
Additive manufacturing produces components layer by layer from a digital model. Rather than “subtracting” materials, additive manufacturing only uses the amount the project requires.
In mobile hydraulics, engineers are challenged with building lighter, more compact machines and meeting strict efficiency requirements. Every pound removed improves the vehicle’s fuel efficiency and payload capacity.
At the same time, manufacturers are looking toward automating systems to cut down on manual labor and to optimize repetitive processes like routine maintenance. Additive manufacturing addresses some of these roadblocks.
How Domin Has Changed Servo Valve Technology with 3D Metal Printing
By adopting 3D metal printing for the creation of their hydraulic servo and proportional valves, Domin has achieved better valve performance, removed common failure modes, lowered weight, and shortened lead times, including:
In short…
Additive manufacturing isn’t a replacement for traditional machining, but it is another tool that expands what’s possible. For engineers, under pressure to reduce weight, improve efficiency, and move faster, it offers a practical way to simplify designs, reduce failure points, and shorten development cycles. As the technology continues to evolve, those who adopt it thoughtfully will be better positioned to stay competitive. These combined benefits are otherwise very difficult or nearly impossible to achieve with conventional manufacturing.
The NEW Hänchen Safety Catcher
Hänchen has just released the Safety Catcher, a mechanical clamping unit designed to keep vertical, gravity-loaded axles from dropping in the event of a failure. It clamps rods in any position and holds the load without a continuous energy supply through a self‑reinforcing friction principle.
Released hydraulically or pneumatically and certified by DGUV-Test, it adds a dedicated safety layer for presses, machine tools, lifting systems, and other vertical axes. In the next few weeks, we will dive deeper into application examples, integration details, and how this tool differs from Hänchen’s Ratio-Clamp®.
The Hänchen Safety Catcher at a Glance:
This photo was sourced from Domin’s official website.
Servo Valve Technology for Repeatable Control in Injection Molding
Servo valves play a big role in how consistently an injection molding machine fills, packs, and holds each shot. When that control starts to weaken over time, the machine may still run, but changes in quality, scrap, and process stability can show as a result. Even small changes in valve behavior can show up as visible defects on molded parts or subtle dimensional shifts in critical features.
To better understand the importance of the servo valve in injection molding, it helps to picture what the valve is doing. What may seem like one continuous stroke actually consists of a sudden switch between two very different phases. The machine first pushes molten plastic into the mold under speed control. Then, the pressure control packs and holds the part as it hardens. That control switch happens in about ten milliseconds. During this time, even a few millimeters of inconsistency can change a part’s weight, dimensions, finish, and more. The servo valve is what executes that transition, shot after shot, often a hundred thousand times or more in a single production run.
Typical control challenges in injection molding include:
These moments are so unforgiving because small timing errors compound into visible problems. If the switch happens a fraction of a second too early, the cavity will not finish forming. If the switch happens too late, the high-speed injection can experience a pressure spike, which will overpack the part, causing wear. This is why control, not just speed, is what makes a difference on injection molding processes. A valve with fast, predictable response and accurate spool position feedback lets the machine follow the same movement again and again, so that the last shot of the day is exactly like the first.
This photo was sourced from Domin’s official website.
Which Servo Valve Model is Right for Injection Molding Control?
In plastics injection molding, valve performance matters for stable repeatability in a process that allows little room for error. This is why the Domin S Series is usually the first choice for dynamic injection and control, while the P Series supports systems that prioritize robustness and simplicity.
When to use S Series vs P Series
S Series is best for…
P Series is best for…
S Series Models for Injection Molding
In many cases, the S Series and P Series valves work side-by-side on different functions. This allows engineers to put the highest‑performance S Series valves exactly where control quality matters most, while using P Series valves to deliver cost‑effective, durable control elsewhere on the machine.
Learn more about the Domin S Series & P Series Servo Valves
Our President’s Fluid Power History
In celebration of Fluid Power Professional’s Day last month, we sat down with IC-Fluid Power’s president, Ben Hunger, to talk about his journey through the fluid power industry. “I was practically born with hydraulic oil flowing through his veins,” he says. Listen to how he got started, where he made his own path, his connection to the family business, and who he pays credit to for helping him along the way!