Abstract
High-speed machining (HSM) with excellent quality and dimensional accuracy has been widely used to create 3D structures of metal and plastics. However, the high-speed machining process is not suitable for the rapid realization of 3D thin-walled product because it consumes considerably long time in fixturing process of a work piece. In this paper, an effective rapid manufacturing process is proposed to fabricate 3D thin-walled products directly using HSM, phase change filling and ultrasonic welding. The filling process is useful to hold the thin-walled product during the machining step. The ultrasonic welding process is introduced to make one piece product from two piece parts that are machined by HSM and filling process. The proposed rapid manufacturing (RM) process has been shown that the RM process enables to fabricate the 3D thin-walled products using ABS plastics and aluminum metals from 3D CAD data to functional parts.
