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Rapid Manufacturing of Casting Mold

Undergraduate #405
Discipline: Technology and Engineering
Subcategory: Civil/Mechanical/Manufacturing Engineering

Treyvon Williams - Virginia State University
Co-Author(s): Zhenhua (David) Wu, Virginia State University, VA



Hypothesis: Casting is the process of carefully pouring molten metal into a mold where it will solidify in the shape of the designed mold. The goal of this research is to test the hypothesis of the 3D printed ABS+ mold can be used for casting the metals with low melting point. This research will enrich the curriculum and enhance the laboratory in the course of ‘Manufacturing Processes’. Method and Control: In this research the mold was designed in NX Siemens PLM. A 3-D design was created in a virtual environment that has three dimensions: height, width, and depth. Then the virtual design was utilized in the rapid manufacturing process known as 3-D printing. Casting is one of the oldest shaping processes that dates 6000 years back and this experiment will use innovative techniques in order to recreate this versatile process. Casting was conducted with the 3D printed molds with varied design features, casting product quality defects were detected through experiment trials. Results: In this experiment, we discovered what types of defects could be brought upon through different trials and tests. Conclusion and Future Research: This experiment proved that even with a mold from 3-D printing the casting process is feasible. These experiments had their problems but a rounded edge is actually a better design idea due to the structural weakness of confined hot spots at the corners of sharp corners. Replacing the sharp edges with radii minimizes the stress and heat concentration. The mold design also evolved innovatively throughout each experiment in order to make things easier throughout the casting process. In experiment #2, both of the parts produced no casting defects and both trials were almost identical. It’s concluded that experiment #2 came out the best because of the better sprue design. The design of the sprue helped the fluidity of the metal which helped the alloy’s solidification process.

Funder Acknowledgement(s): This work was supported in part by the HBCU-UP of the National Science Foundation under NSF Cooperative Agreement No. HRD-1036286. Any Opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the National Science Foundation.

Faculty Advisor: Zhenhua (David) Wu, zwu@vsu.edu

Role: Experimentation

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant No. DUE-1930047. Any opinions, findings, interpretations, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of its authors and do not represent the views of the AAAS Board of Directors, the Council of AAAS, AAAS’ membership or the National Science Foundation.

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