Integration of Numerical Modeling and Laser Sintering with Investment Casting

Industry has a great demand for metallic prototypes to speed up product development. At \npresent there are several RP-technologies for direct fabrication of metal components in \ndevelopment. Today secondary processing of polymer or wax models, like investment \ncasting or sand casting, is a very common way for the production of metallic prototypes. \nThere are, however, several problems in investment casting resulting from laser sintered \nmodels made of wax or polycarbonate. \nRecently a polymer mixture consisting of nylon material and a second polymer has been \ntested with the laser sinter process in a newly developed sinter machine (EOSINT 350 - \n60). Shells for investment casting could be prepared easily with the models in a \nconventional assembly-line. Several castings of laser sintered models in Al were \nsuccessfully realized. \nIn future, integration of modeling based on FEM calculations with RP for castings will \nbecome more important. Calculations will support the designer to optimize the structure of \ncomponents and their processing. A viable method will be presented where a new FEM \nbased calculation method to optimize the structure design of a model is integrated with RP. \nOptimizing castings with FEM will be supported by integration with RP.