2002a) ‘Rapid prototyping and manufacturing by gelcasting of metallic and ceramic slurries’, Materials Science and Engineering A

In this work an approach for rapid prototyping and manufacturing of metallic as well as ceramic parts is presented. By using Mold Shape Deposition Manufacturing (MoldSDM), a wax mold is fabricated which is filled with a slurry containing the final part material in powder form. The wax mold is manufactured by first decomposing the desired part geometry into machinable compacts. In a next step the mold is built up in a series of layers by machining either the wax or a sacrificial support material. The surface quality of the final mold is only limited by the abilities of the CNC machine. After casting a ceramic or metallic slurry, the wax mold is removed and the obtained green part debinded and sintered. In this work the mechanical and microstructural properties of the parts obtained by this method are presented. The materials which have been investigated are silicon nitride and stainless steels. Due to the high mold quality the process is suitable for a variety of applications in rapid prototyping an