Preparation Of Molding Mateirals And Water-based Binder For3DP Technology

Rapid prototyping (RP) technology is a new manufacturing technology developed atthe late1980s. It uses the3D CAD data to bond the material layer by layer by rapidprototyping machine. It could make design ideas as prototype or parts with a certain functionautomatically, quickly, directly, precisely.As one of the rapid prototyping technology, the three dimensional printing （3DP）technology belongs to the green desktop rapid prototyping equipment. It has many advantagessuch as low cost, small size, environmental protection, etc. Bonding material3DP technologyis one of the3DP technologies and is very useful. The principle is using the sprinklers tosupply adhesive and bond the powder molding materials selectively layer by layer. Becausethis technology does not require a supporting material, the cost is far lower than other rapidprototyping technologies. Kinds of materials can be used into this technology such as plaster,plastic, rubber, ceramics, etc. It could be used to make both conceptual model and productmodel and widely be used in many areas such as the molding industry, architectural design,medical equipment preparation, automobile, etc. At present, there are no these materialsproduced in China, so it’s very necessary to develop these materials.This paper described the principle and something else of RP and3DP technology.Besides, it studied the methods to develop the molding material and related glue which couldbe used in3DP technology. Modified calcium sulfate was the most important composition inthe powder molding material. This paper explored a new method to modify the calciumsulfate powder, got the best condition to speed up the hardening of calcium sulfate throughorthogonal test, and studied the reason of it. It used some analysis software to get the bestformula of powder material by adding other powder such as silica, polyvinyl alcohol, andalumina and so on basing on a large number of experiments and tested thedensity, compressive strength, hardening time, rolling quality of powder materials. Besides,the formula of related water-based binder was studied by making the imported binder as areference and the necessary nature such as surface tension, viscosity, evaporation rate, and electrical conductivity and so on was studied respectively. At last, the research tested theeffect by making powder material and water-based binder together by Z310three-dimensional printer and the result was satisfactory.