Design and Manufacture of a Wax Injection Tool for Investment Casting using Rapid Tooling
Rapid Prototyping (RP) and Rapid Tooling (RT) are playing an increasingly significant role in responding to intense global markets competition and achieving compressed time-to-market solutions.Among these, the process of rapid tooling is significantly important for the industry. As a consequence of the demand for high quality products, low cost and short development cycles, most industries are looking for ways to improve the speed of the production processes. Thus, it is essential that the development teams know and use the new technologies in the product development.A rapid wax injection tool of a gearbox shift fork was designed, simulated and manufactured using rapid prototyping and rapid tooling technology, in order to save time and cost of producing wax models used for the investment casting process. The results of this research were compared with conventional wax model production methods. The criteria of such comparison were based upon parameters such as time, cost and other related characteristics, which resulted in saving of 50% in time and 60% in cost.In this research, design, assembly and wax injection operation of the wax tool took 10 days.Considering the fact that wax melting temperature is as low as 70 o C and injection pressure of 0.5 MPa, the tool may suffer no damage due to the thermal and pressure stresses, leading to the mass production of wax models. Obviously CAE simulation softwares such as MoldFlow and ANSYS are significant aids in rapid tooling analysis, acquiring tooling parameters and melt behaviour in the cavity. In particular, MoldFlow is used to get wax injection moulding parameters such as filling parameters, temperature profiles, freeze time, speed, and pressure.
Rapid Prototyping Stereolithography Rapid Tooling Wax Moulding Investment Casting
Sadegh RAHMATI Mohamad Reza REZAEI Javad AKBARI
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Islamic Azad University Majlesi Branch, Iran
国际会议
北京
英文
418-427
2008-11-06（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）