Impeller Rapid Prototyping And Simulation Research On Investment Casting Process

As a typical turbine in power equipment,the impeller is used in the automotive,marine and electric power industries,but also widely used in high-end fields such as aviation and aerospace.Conventional impeller manufacturing mostly uses machining and casting methods,but the blades are complex space curved surfaces,the processing time is long and the cost is high.Considering the high precision of investment casting technology for manufacturing complex thin-walled castings,this paper uses it as a manufacturing method of impeller.In view of the long process of traditional investment casting process,this paper combines the FDM technology to manufacture the resin investment mold of the impeller and casting system to replace the wax mold.In view of the randomness of the traditional investment casting results,the casting simulation technology is used to simulate and optimize the impeller casting process to improve the success rate of casting.The entire research process can be summarized as:Firstly,an existing well-structured impeller is used as a prototype.The point cloud data is obtained by reverse scanning technology,and the point cloud data is processed by Imageware software to reconstruct the impeller model.Then in the FDM,the typical parameters affecting the forming precision of the impeller resin parts are analyzed and optimized,and the impeller parts with better forming quality are obtained.Then,the initial casting system is designed for the characteristics of the impeller.The simulation and optimization are carried out by the numerical simulation technology of the casting process.The optimized casting system and casting process parameters are used to guide the actual casting process.Finally,the impeller casting with complete surface roughness less than 4.10μm is obtained through the shell making,pouring and post-treatment.The whole research process shows that the combination of rapid prototyping technology and investment casting can shorten the production cycle by nearly 50%compared with traditional investment casting.At the same time,the casting simulation technology is used to guide the actual casting process,which can greatly shorten the trial production.Cycle,reduce costs.The research in this paper provides an inspiration for the rapid casting of impeller-like castings with thin-walled surface features.