Rapid Tooling (2) : Al Powder Filled Resin Tooling and Its Characteristics

급속금형제작 (2) : 알루미늄 분말 혼합수지를 이용한 간이형 제작과 그 특성

In the previous study. the powder casting was attempted as the rapid tooling. The powder casting was the process to cast dry powder into the casting mold transferred from R/P model and infiltrate the liquid binder to solidify the powder. And then, the melted copper was infiltrated to control the shrinkage rate of the final mold Conseqently, the shrinkage rate was under 0.1% through that process. The mechanical characteristic was also excellent. Generally, in the slurry casting, the alumina powder and the water soluble phenol were mainly used. However, the mechanical property of the phenol was not good enough to apply to molds directly. In this study, aluminium powder filled with epoxy is applicated to the slurry casting to solve these problems. The mechanical and thermal properties are better than phenol because the epoxy is the thermosetting resin. We achieved a successful result that the shrinkage rate is shortened about 0.047%. Futhermore, the manufacturing time and cost savings are significant. Finally, we assume that the developing possibility of this process is very optimistic.