The purpose of this paper is to present a novel rapid prototyping (RP) approach and verifying its feasibility. This alternative solution is to bring several merits from both selective laser sintering and laminated object manufacturing.
The phenolic resin coated sand is used in this method. It could be cured at an appropriate temperature and be invalidated at a higher one. Therefore, the fabrication flows from laser cutting along slice profiles to a bulk curing heating after stacking up. Finally, the workpiece may be detached out of the excess material. Experiments and modeling on laser scanning are conducted to optimize the processing parameters, which, along with the direct slicing strategy, guarantee the part performance.
A novel prototyping system is developed comprising the software package and prototyping machine, through which several specimens are fabricated. The results show the feasibility of the proposed RP method.
This research brings the applicability of a hybrid solution: profile invalidation RP.
