Emulate Molds as Sturdy as Metals
Experience shorter lead times and production costs in tooling for applications of sand casting, investment casting, and metal hydroforming in manufacturing processes of metal objects.
Applications
Sand casting
With 3D printing as an industrial solution, create your sand molds and cast metal parts with PolyJet or FDM technology, and gain the additional benefits of savings in labor, cost, and time in getting mold prototypes out for verification and production use.
Manufacture sand molds of high-resolution printing with extremely fine details and smooth with PolyJet technology. PolyJet materials such as FullCure have resilient mechanical properties that can withstand harsh conditions and last longer.
For sand molds that need high compressive strength in addition to high-quality surface finish, FDM technology and the thermoplastic materials used can optimally serve your business needs.
Investment casting
For prototypes and short production runs, FDM 3D printing technology can alternatively produce investment casting patterns with impressive time and cost savings.
In just a day, complex prototypes can be created to assimilate the casting functions for form and fit evaluation, while having the material properties of superior durability and accuracy to put the FDM part into performance testing.
By simply adopting FDM technology to cast mold prototypes, RLM Industries managed to gain up to 75 to 94% in cost savings, and 7 weeks of time savings.
Metal hydroforming
With Stratasys printers, you can finish your 3D printing in less than 24 hours without any human intervention. You can also gain the benefit of lowering both the cost of die production and lead time by 50 to 70% and 60 to 80% respectively, without much changes to current manufacturing processes.
FDM materials such as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) M30, polycarbonate (PC), and ULTEM 9085 are production-grade thermoplastics that have unparalleled resistance to pressures required for hydroforming. In terms of production capabilities, this means that the 3D printed tools can last hundreds of production cycles with minimal wear.
Furthermore, the process of lubricating sheet metal blanks to form trapped pockets can be done away with, as FDM products are naturally porous and lubricated.
