Direct manufacturing of ceramic investment casting shells using SLS

lt is becoming increasingly important in the field of product development, to minimise both the manufacturing time and the closeness to net shape of the parts produced. Whilst numerous approaches have already been successfully implemented and market for plastic parts, Rapid Prototyping for metallic parts, has stubbornly remained an area fraught with difficulties. Although several variations of the powderbased techniques such as Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) and Laser Generation have been commercialised, the metal parts produced cannot, as a rule, be described as near net-shape. This disadvantage can be avoided by switching to casting techniques which use moulds manufactured in rapid prototyping operations - either indirectly via a master model produced using rapid prototyping techniques or directly made from croning sand, for example.