Re: Rapid prototyping for electrodes

From: Bradley C. Fox (bfox@rapid-design.com)
Date: Sun Sep 24 2000 - 15:14:19 EEST


Nicolas:
We have a proprietary process to make accurate, long lasting electrodes in
a Copper Tungsten material. The process utilizes the 3D Keltool (powder
based) technology, however, we have modified it to enable us to make the
electrodes instead of the normal A6 inserts.

These electrodes will produce better surface finishes and are about 50%
longer lasting than normal graphite.

A recent project we had was quite interesting and combined RP and our CuW
electrode technology. A customer sent us little "molds" - which are the
reverse geometry of the electrode - built on their ThermoJet machine. We
used these "molds" to pour our Tungsten blend into, thusly forming the
shape of the electrode. We processed these to produce the final, fully
infiltrated copper-tungsten electrode. The results were very, very
good. Because of the good detail that ThermoJet can build into the "molds"
(TJet builds at .0015 per layer), we produced corresponding good detail in
the final product.

Additionally, by using the ThermoJet to build the electrode "mold"
(actually several were done at once) a quantity of electrodes were produced
and shipped in roughly 4 days time!

I think that one of the most significant benefits of using the CuW
electrodes is that they are a very trustworthy technology. Besides some of
the benefits over traditional electrodes such as wear rate and surface
finish, they can be trusted and therefore used in a production setting.

Watch for a Press Release from us next month on this technology.

Sincerely,

Brad Fox
Rapid Design & Tooling Center
PH: 651-483-2703

>Hi,
>
>I would like to know if it is possible to make copper electrodes by using
>rapid prototyping.
>Thanks list.
>
>Guidoni Nicolas
>
>guidoni@caramail.com

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 - 23:04:22 EEST