• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.15 no.6 s.87
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• pp.436-440
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• 2006

A rapid tooling (RT) method fur the resin transfer molding (RTM) have been investigated. We fabricated a curved I-beam to verify the method. After creating a three-dimensional CAD model of the beam we fabricated a prototype of the model using a rapid prototyping (RP) machine. A soft mold was made using the prototype by the conventional silicone mold technique. The procedure and method of mold fabrication is described. The mold was cut into several parts to allow easier placement of the fiber preform. We conducted the resin transfer molding process and manufactured a composite beam with the mold. The preform was built by stacking up eight layers of delicately cut carbon fabrics. The fabrics were properly stitched to maintain the shape while placement. The manufactured composites beam was inspected and found well-impregnated. The fiber volume ratio of the fabricated beam was 16.85%.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Technology of Plasticity Conference
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• 2002.02a
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• pp.187-194
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• 2002

This paper describes the experimental results on direct selective laser sintering of WC-Co mixture for rapid tooling. The experiments were carried out within an air, argon and nitrogen atmosphere. Coupons of single layer were sintered at various laser powers, scanning speeds and scan spacings. As the energy density (energy per unit scanned area) is increased, the thickness of coupons is increased. The main problem took place during sintering within an air atmosphere was severe oxidation of WC-Co mixture. As the laser power is increased and/or scanning speed is decreased, more severe oxidation occurred. Within an argon and nitrogen atmosphere the oxidation is reduced significantly. Experiments on multi-layer sintering were also carried out.

• Journal of Powder Materials
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.102-109
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• 2000

With the emergence of the 3D CAD, it is possible to create a physical part directly from a digital model by accumulating layers of a given material. The technology is being widely used for checking designs, to create master models for rapid tooling, and for reverse engineering. However, in general, a model created by rapid prototyping technology is made of soft material that cannot be used as mass prouduction hard tool. Newly developed powder casting is suitable for rapid-manufacturing metallic tools. Powder casting can serve as a promising rapid tooling method because of high density characteristics and low dimensional shrinkage below 0.1% during sintering and infiltration. Through this process, we have realized significant time and cost savings eliminating the expense of conventional prototype tooling process.

• Journal of Korea Foundry Society
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.277-282
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• 2000

The RP&M (Rapid prototyping and Manufacturing) is the most appropriate technology for the small-lot production system, in which the production cycle is getting shorter owing to various needs from consumers. In this paper, RP&M is applied to a casting process. A casting process has a merit of being able to reflect complicated shapes at one time. But it has not been applied to the precision industry because of bad quality on surface. So we will improve characteristics of aluminum casting process using vacuum sealed casting process and porous ceramic mold which is made by slurry casting process.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.16 no.11
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• pp.62-67
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• 1999

The RP&M(Rapid Prototyping and Manufacturing) is the most appropriate technology for the small-lot production system, in which the production cycle is getting shorter owing to various needs from consumers. Recently RP products which are made of plastics, wax, and paper are used to verify the design of samples. But these products cannot be applied to the real mold because the strength enough to be a mold cannot be given by soft materials such as plastics. So RP products are copied to AFR(Al powder Filled Resin) molds or metal molds, which is called the RP&M. In this paper, RP&M is applied to a casting process. A porous casting mold, which is made from ceramic powder and binder, is used for rapid tooling of aluminum shoes molds.

• Journal of Korea Foundry Society
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.330-335
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• 2000

Functional metal prototypes are often required in numerous industrial applications. These components are typically needed in the early stage of a project to determine form, fit and function. Recent R/P(Rapid Prototyping) part are made of soft materials such as plastics, wax, paper, these master models cannot be employed durable test in real harsh working environment. Parts by direct metal rapid tooling method, such as laser sintering, by now are hard to get net shape, pores of the green parts of powder casting method must be infiltrated to get proper strength as tool, and new type of 3D direct tooling system combining fabrication welding arc and cutting process is reported. But a system which can build directly 3D parts of high performance functional material as metal park would get long period of system development, massive investment and other serious obstacles, such as patent. In this paper, through the rapid tooling process as silicon rubber molding using R/P master model, and fabricate wax pattern in that silicon rubber mold using vacuum casting method, then we translated the wax patterns to numerous metal tool prototypes by new investment casting process combined conventional investment casting with rapid prototyping & rapid tooling process. With this wax-injection-mold-free investment casting, we developed new investment casting process of fabricating numerous functional metal prototypes from one master model, combined 3-D CAD, R/P and conventional investment casting and tried to expect net shape measuring total dimension shrinkage from R/P pare to metal part.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.165-173
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• 2003

As the cycling time of new products have become more and more short in recent years, the demand for lowering the cost and reducing the production time becomes stronger. In order for the demand, the rapid prototyping and rapid tooling technology have been used. It has been widely known that RP technology has advantages with fabricating 3-D object having a complicated geometric shape. RP products, however, have a limitation with applying to the real die and mold because soft materials such as resin, paper and wax has been mostly used in RP technology. So in this paper, the RP products have been copied to semi-metallic soft tools using the mixture of metal fillers and epoxy resin. In order to evaluate the effect of the fillers on the characteristics of semi-metallic soft tools, three fillers are used including commercial aluminum powder, cast iron powder recycled by machining chips, and aluminum short fiber made by self-excited vibration technique. Besides, in the case of aluminum powder, the change of characteristics of semi-metallic soft tools is also tested according to the volume fraction of the powder.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.23 no.7 s.184
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• pp.101-107
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• 2006

Cold gas dynamic spray or cold spray is a novel manufacturing method for coatings. Cold spray is a high rate and direct material deposition process that utilizes the kinetic energy of particles sprayed at high velocity (300-1,200m/s). In this research, a technique to repair the damaged mold by cold spray deposition and mechanical machining was proposed. An aluminum 6061 mold with three-dimensional surface was fabricated, intentionally damaged and material-added by cold spray, and its original geometry was re-obtained successfully by Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machining. To investigate deformation of material caused by cold spray, deposition was conducted on thin aluminum plates ($100mm{\times}100mm{\times}3mm$). The average deformation of the plates was $205{\sim}290{\mu}m$ by Coordinate Measurement Machine (CMM). In addition, the cross section of deposited layer was analyzed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). To compare variation of hardness, Vickers hardness was measured by micro-hardness tester.