Wednesday 19 March 2014

Manufacturing Aluminium Prototype Parts Quickly

Once again we have the requirement to manufacture low volume aluminium prototype parts, before commissioning high pressure die casting tooling.

The part shown below needs to be manufactured within the week, it has been 3D printed in plastic. The part has been fully engineered for die casting, so drafts, shrinkage etc have already been considered.




The first step was to print out this master part 1/70th larger to take into account shrinkage from the sand casting process.

Once the sand casting is done next week, we will send off the parts to be heat treated, then onto being machined.  After machining the parts will be polished to a high mirror finish.

Fingers crossed everything goes to plan. I will update once the parts have been finished!