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Full-Text Articles in Mechanical Engineering
Investment Casting With Ice Patterns Made By Rapid Freeze Prototyping, Wei Zhang, Ming-Chuan Leu, Chao Feng, Rong Ren, Renjie Zhang, Qingping Lu, Jubu Jiang, Yongnian Yan
Investment Casting With Ice Patterns Made By Rapid Freeze Prototyping, Wei Zhang, Ming-Chuan Leu, Chao Feng, Rong Ren, Renjie Zhang, Qingping Lu, Jubu Jiang, Yongnian Yan
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works
One of the most promising applications of rapid freeze prototyping (RFP) is making metal parts by investment casting with the built ice parts. The integration of RFP and investment casting allows fast creation of complex net-shape metal parts directly from their CAD models. The advantages of doing so include no part geometric complexity limitation, no experience of parting line design and assembling needed, clean and low-cost of process operation, and good performance. In this paper, we will present our recent study on binder selection, slurry making, ceramic shell making, and the casting results of the metal parts.
Lifecycle Analysis For Environmentally Conscious Solid Freeform Manufacturing, Yanchun Luo, Ji Zhiming, Ming-Chuan Leu, R. J. Caudill
Lifecycle Analysis For Environmentally Conscious Solid Freeform Manufacturing, Yanchun Luo, Ji Zhiming, Ming-Chuan Leu, R. J. Caudill
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works
A lifecycle based process model for analyzing the environmental performance of SFM processes and SFM based rapid tooling processes is presented in this paper. The process environmental performance assessment model considers material, energy and disposal scenarios. The material use, process parameters (e.g. scanning speed) and power use can affect the environmental consequence of a process when material resource, energy, human health and environmental damage are taken into account. The presented method is applied to the SLA process and two SLA based rapid tooling processes. The method can be used to compare different rapid prototyping (RP) and RT processes in terms …