Investigation Of Al-alloy LFC Mold Material And Its Rapid Manufacturing Technology

Lost foam casting(LFC) process is an importantly evolutive orientation of casting technology,and is called as foundry technology for the 21st century. In view of the problems during quality,production cycle and cost in manufacturing LFC mold,new LFC mold material and its rapid manufacturing technology was developed in this paper. A novel Aluminum-alloy was developed by optimizing chemical composition,strict controlling the melting process. The alloy has many advantages including good casting behavior,high hardness,good machinability and proper strength. Artificial aging on the novel Al-alloy were studied,the mechanical property and microstructure of the samples were evaluated under different artificial aging process. The economic and effective strengthening process was proposed that the aging temperature is 180℃ and the aging time is 10 hours. The main mechanical property of the alloy is HB103 in hardness and 188Mpa in ultimate tensile strength.Rapid manufacturing process of LFC mold casting based on NC machined foam prototype was brought forward. Three casting technology for LFC mold casting based on foam prototype were compared. The result shows that the best technology is sodium silicate sand bonded mould without foam pattern. Combined with self-developed Al-alloy mold material,rapid manufacturing of many high quality LFC mold was achieved. The application of numerical analysis software ANSYS to the solidification process of Al-alloy LFC mold casting was presented primarily. The simulation of the temperature field was carried out,and actual cast tests were done to validate. The result shows that the simulation of casting solidification process for the alloy by the ANSYS is an effective method.