re: rapid tooling

From: Garcia Romero, Ana (AnGarcia@inasmet.es)
Date: Thu Oct 21 1999 - 17:40:47 EEST


It sounds very interesting, although you do not mention anything
about the brittleness of the material you are employing for these
moulds, which could be a limiting factor. Other possible limitation
could be the price of the molds, specially if the size of them is
large, and a very large furnace is required to burn them. However,
the idea is very interesting for moulds. If you have any published
information about it I would thank a copy.

Best regards,.......and good luck with the recovery of the lab!

> From: "Christopher Charles Ainslev (Dr)" <Mccainsley@ntu.edu.sg>
> To: "'rp-ml@ltk.hut.fi'" <rp-ml@ltk.hut.fi>
> Subject: re: rapid tooling
> Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 09:13:53 +0800

> > Dear RP's
> >
> > I was wondering if any body would like to express their opinions on
> > my current research for rapid tooling.
> >
> > I have been working for a number of years in the area of slip casting as a
> > method of forming injection-moulding tools. Recently I have been slip
> > casting Silicon carbide and a few months back produced a simple test
> > injection-moulding tool with a silicon carbide insert, which after a few
> > initial problems seam to work OK. The main problem from that point on was
> > the restriction in the geometry's that could be formed which I believe I
> > have now solved.
> >
> > This is very preliminary results but the final parts should be within a
> > dimensional tolerance of *0.05% of that of the patterns dimensions. And
> > the surface finish should be with in 1Ra of the pattern. The final parts
> > are reaction bonded silicon carbide, fully dense, and it is estimated that
> > the tensile strength should be in the order of 200-300Mpa.
> > The potential advantages of using this material and method of forming
> > injection moulding tools is that it is extremely wear resistant and
> > resistant to corrosion, has very good thermal conductivity of about 10
> > times that of a tool steel. Using this method of forming could be both
> > cheaper and quicker that conventional tooling methods and the only
> > restriction on the size of the tool that can be formed should be the
> > furnace size.
> > I have also done some initial work using (silicon carbide, copper,
> > silicon) materials and (silicon carbide, aluminum, silicon) but have no
> > accuracy data on this compositions.
> >
> > What I am looking for are opinions good and bad about this method of
> > tooling and what are the potential other uses of this technology. As at
> > this moment in time I am looking to research other potential areas for
> > using this forming method, as I can do no experimental work due to a fire
> > in the lab where I was working (not caused by me I might add).
> >
> >
> > All opinions are welcome and just to put this into context the objective
> > off the research is to produce an alternative to production tooling.
> > Thanks for your time
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> > Chris Ainsley
> >
> email : mccainsley@ntu.edu.sg
>
> For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/
>
Dr Ana Garc¡a Romero

INASMET
Camino de Portuetxe 12, San Sebasti n 20.009
Spain
Tel. 34-943-31 62 47/31 66 22
Fax. 34-943-21 75 60

For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jun 05 2001 - 22:53:06 EEST