· IngenierÃa ·
S Jones, C Yuan and S Blackburn
IRC in Materials Processing, University of Birmingham, UK.
67th World Foundry Congress
Investment casting is a time-consuming, labour intensive process, which
can produce complex, high value-added components for a variety of
specialised industries. Drying and strength-development of each coat
during shell mould production is the most significant rate-limiting factor in
the reduction of lead times and production costs for industry. As such,
improvements which reduce cost and cycle times, open up new
opportunities for product development.
A new shell build technique using a super absorbent polymer additive has
been developed for mould production, such that moisture removal is not
required to cause binder gellation for each individual mould coating.
Therefore the drying time before a subsequent coat can be applied is
dramatically reduced. All coats can be applied using the same novel
additive thus leading to a large cumulative saving in overall mould
processing time. This technology may allow the industry to successfully
compete for the first time with other high volume forming methods as the
traditional barrier of long processing times will be reduced. This paper
introduces the technique, details shell development and results and
follows the process through various iterations to the final proven concept.
