Additive Manufacturing of Plastics: An Efficient Approach for Composite Tooling

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) is increasingly used in different applications ranging from prototyping to the production of functional parts. One particular case is represented by the production of tooling for composites. The choice of AM techniques can be oriented both to the production of durable and removable tooling depending on composite part geometry. The development of sacrificial removable tooling for hollow composite air ducts is the main focus of this paper. The use of AM techniques is compared to the standard production approach using autoclave molding with a stainless steel mold as production technique. The different processing approaches are compared in terms of cost, production parameters, and of the final properties of the composites obtained. The use of soluble tooling shows clearly some benefits in terms of cost savings (i.e., 30%) and production time (i.e., 25%). However, the tooling removal technique outlines some drawbacks in terms of the final glass transition temperatures of the composite materials that was reduced to about 16°C after 6 h treatment.

Additive Manufacturing Processing of Plastics for Mass Production of Composites Tooling: Technical and Economic Analysis

“…The use of inflatable bladders is a technical solution, but it requires the use of matched molds containing the bladder thus increasing manufacturing costs. [ 5 ] In the attempt to further improve the use of removable mandrels, two alternatives were considered here for mandrel manufacturing: soluble mandrel printed by FDM and break‐away mandrel printed by LCD. The design and use of the soluble FDM mandrel are described first and then the break‐away LCD mandrels are discussed.…”

“…[ 2–4 ] In few cases, AM tooling was used as removable tool which is preferably used to manufacture hollow composites parts. [ 5 ]…”

Comparison of Three Additive Manufacturing (AM) Techniques for Manufacturing Complex Hollow Composite Parts

“…Three scenarios were simulated: the printing of one single mandrel, of 40 pieces (as previously investigated in ref. [3]) and of 100 pieces. The three printers considered are the Fortus 400 mc for FDM technology, the Ultimaker S5 for FFF technology and Photocentric's LC-Magna for LCD technology.…”

“…Our study team used this technique to create a realistic sacrificial mandrel production scenario for producing intakes. [ 3 ] After a preliminary cost comparison, this technology showed to be significantly more cost effective than the standard steel mold method. However, because the dissolution procedure necessitates the use of a basic solution at specific temperature and ultrasonic conditions, this postprocessing influenced the final composite, resulting in a loss of the observed thermomechanical characteristics (e.g., glass transition temperature, T g ).…”

Epoxy Based Blends for Additive Manufacturing by Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) Printing: The Effect of Blending and Dual Curing on Daylight Curable Resins

“…This is a relevant point for application. In the literature there are increasing examples of the use of additive manufacturing in several fields ranging from microfluidics [11][12][13], tooling for composites [14,15] and injection molding [16]. Mixing epoxy blends with photocurable resins can open the field to novel formulation too if complex toughened epoxy blends area used [17,18] because this can be a suitable method to obtain the impact resistance of the printed specimens.…”