Re: kira

From: Fruth (fruth@t-online.de)
Date: Wed Nov 19 1997 - 13:19:25 EET


Nkin@aol.com wrote:
>
> Charly Fruth,
>
> I was pleased to read of your 4/29, 4/30 comments on the Kira Solid Center.
>
> Please, if you get a chance, I'd be very interested in knowing how your
> continued experience has been Do you think that technology has a good
> future?
>
> At the time I believe you were reasonably pleased with everything but the
> software and were working on that problem. I hope you've been successful.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Norm Kinzie
> Needham, Massachusetts, USA

Hi Mr. Kinzie.

nice to hear from you again.

as i belive other subscribers of the mailing list are interested too, i
cc the mail.

We did a lot of tests in the last 7 month.
we run th kira solid center for about 1400 hours now.
First new is, that we generated a new name for the process, together
with Kira corporation. We call it PLT ( Paper Lamination Technology)
now.
Now the real things:
We did a test with a big gear (850mmx650mmx370mm 42 l volume)for
sandcasting. The test run very good. The pattern was build in 24 single
parts. We glue them together and the dimension of the pattern had been
fantastic, about +- 0.4mm in x,y direction, 0.6 mm in z. The did 5 casts
until now, but they are going on to make 18 part in grey cast iron.
Maybe you can imagine the high forces on this huge pattern while forming
with sand.

We did some pattern for rocker panels and pillars. The result was
excellent because of the mechanical stability. Nearly no warping in the
parts ( all beetween 1000mm and 1500mm lenght). So we got very good
PU-parts in vacuum-casting and RIM.

We get a lot of cad modells with very thin bottoms in the last time.
This was a big problem in SLA to build this modells (bottom-thickness
0.6mm to 0.2mm) because they are not stabile. The deformation was up to
10 mm after we got the patterns back from our customers after
pre-checking.
Now we build the bottoms with PLT and glue the thin walls and domes on
the PLT parts. The accuracy is ok but the geometrie perfect!
So we get very good parts out of silicon tools.

We stopped testing filigran parts because it makes no sence to build
this parts. They are much cheaper build in SLA.

So after 7 month we can say it is a perfect technologie for combining
with SLA.

The machine is useable for:

1. huge parts
2. huge blends
3. hybrid modells ( made in different rp-technologies)

that is possible because our cuttings are very exact, so it is possible
to glue the parts with a good quality.

For all, wo want to see the machine in europe, visit our stand at
euromold ( 12/3 - 12/6 in Frankfurt) hall 8 stand I25.

What we still need is a machine for real filigran structures with
details for about 0.1mm. The sanders machine comes near but not near
enough.



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