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Development and application of a mold clamping mechanism for improving dimensional accuracy of vacuum casting parts and reducing mold production cost

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Abstract

Vacuum casting (VC) is a highly versatile manufacturing technique capable of producing parts in a wide range of polymers for end use plastic parts or prototypes. VC technology is ideally suited to low volume batch production compared with plastic injection molding since a silicone rubber mold (SRM) can be used to produce up to fifty to eighty parts. The main challenge of this method is that the both dimensional and form accuracies of the VC parts were affected by the fastening force of the SRM using tape due to the fastening force is inconsistent for different operators. In this study, an intelligent SRM clamping mechanism comprising a pressure sensor and Arduino pressure sensing module was developed for reducing the variations in both dimensional and form accuracies of the VC parts. It was found that the 14 kPa is the optimal clamping pressure. The angular deviation of the cuboid VC parts produced by the intelligent clamping mechanism falls within the range of one standard deviation (SD) to the average. The minimum zone circle deviation of the cylinder VC parts produced by the intelligent clamping mechanism falls within the range of − 1 to 2 SDs. In addition, the production cost of the SRM can further be reduced by about 23% using an intelligent clamping mechanism compared with that using the conventional method.

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Funding

This study received financial support from the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan under contract nos. MOST 110–2221-E-131–023 and MOST 109–2637-E-131–004.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Ming Chi University of Technology, No. 84, Gungjuan Road, New Taipei City, Taiwan

    Chil-Chyuan Kuo, Hsueh-An Liu, Hong-Yi Lu & Pi-Rong Shi

  2. Research Center for Intelligent Medical Devices, Ming Chi University of Technology, No. 84, Gungjuan Road, New Taipei City, 243, Taiwan

    Chil-Chyuan Kuo

Authors
  1. Chil-Chyuan Kuo
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  2. Hsueh-An Liu
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  3. Hong-Yi Lu
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  4. Pi-Rong Shi
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Contributions

Chil-Chyuan Kuo: wrote the paper/conceived and designed the analysis/performed the analysis/conceptualization.

Hsueh-An Liu/Hong-Yi Lu, Pi-Rong Shi: collected the data/contributed data or analysis tools.

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Correspondence to Chil-Chyuan Kuo.

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Kuo, CC., Liu, HA., Lu, HY. et al. Development and application of a mold clamping mechanism for improving dimensional accuracy of vacuum casting parts and reducing mold production cost. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 118, 1577–1588 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-021-08029-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-021-08029-8

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