Effect of gel time of 3D sand printing binder system on quality of sand mold/core

Two important factors affecting the performance of sand mold/core generated by 3D printing(3DP)are strength and dimensional accuracy,which are not only closely related to the reactivity of furan resin and the phase transition of silica sand,but also the curing agent system of furan resin.This paper studies the influence of gel time on the strength and dimensional accuracy of a 3DP sand mold/core,taking the furan resin system as an example and using a sand specimen generated by a 3DP inkjet molding machine.The experiment demonstrates that the gel time of 3 to 6 min for the sand mixture suits 3DP core-making most under the experimental condition.However,it should be noted that under the same resin condition,the strength of a no-bake sand mold/core is higher than that of a 3DP sand mold/core.The dimensional accuracy of the sand mold/core does not change significantly when the gel time is less than 15 min.Improving the activity of binder and developing ultra-strong acid with low corrosion shall be an effective way to improve the quality of the mold/core by 3D printing.

Sand-bed defect recognition for 3D sand printing based on deep residual network

The 3D sand printing(3DSP),by binder jetting technology for rapid casting,has a pivotal role in promoting the development of the traditional casting industry as a result of producing high-quality and economical sand molds.This work presents an approach for monitoring and analyzing powder sand-bed images to serve as a real-time control system in a 3DSP machine.A deep residual network(ResNet)is used to classify the defects occurring during the powder spreading stage of the process.Firstly,a pre-trained network was applied as the initial parameter;then it was fine-tuned on the labelled defective sample dataset to accomplish the task,which defines the sand-bed defects induced in the 3DSP processing.Furthermore,the recognition and positioning of sand-bed defects were readily achieved by dividing the sand-bed images into blocks.Experiments show that the fine-tuned network has a 98.7%classification accuracy on the validation dataset of sand-bed defects and 95.4%recognition accuracy for the sand-bed images.

Effect of fractures on mechanical behavior of sand powder 3D printing rock analogue under triaxial compression

In practical engineering applications,rock mass are often found to be subjected to a triaxial stress state.Concurrently,defects like joints and fractures have a notable impact on the mechanical behavior of rock mass.Such defects are identified as crucial contributors to the failure and instability of the surrounding rock,subsequently impacting the engineering stability.The study aimed to investigate the impact of fracture geometry and confining pressure on the deformation,failure characteristics,and strength of specimens using sand powder 3D printing technology and conventional triaxial compression tests.The results indicate that the number of fractures present considerably influences the peak strength,axial peak strain and elastic modulus of the specimens.Confining pressure is an important factor affecting the failure pattern of the specimen,under which the specimen is more prone to shear failure,but the initiation,expansion and penetration processes of secondary cracks in different fracture specimens are different.This study confirmed the feasibility of using sand powder 3D printing specimens as soft rock analogs for triaxial compression research.The insights from this research are deemed essential for a deeper understanding of the mechanical behavior of fractured surrounding rocks when under triaxial stress state.

Elimination of cracks in stainless steel casings via 3D printed sand molds with an internal topology structure

The important supporting component in a gas turbine is the casing,which has the characteristics of large size,complex structure,and thin wall.In the context of existing 3DP sand casting processes,casting crack defects are prone to occur.This leads to an increase in the scrap rate of casings,causing significant resource wastage.Additionally,the presence of cracks poses a significant safety hazard after the casings are put into service.The generation of different types of crack defects in stainless steel casings is closely related to casting stress and the high-temperature concession of the sand mold.Therefore,the types and causes of cracks in stainless steel casing products,based on their structural characteristics,were systematically analyzed.Various sand molds with different internal topology designs were printed using the 3DP technology to investigate the impact of sand mold structures on high-temperature concession.The optimal sand mold structure was used to cast casings,and the crack suppression effect was verified by analyzing its eddy current testing results.The experimental results indicate that the skeleton structure has an excellent effect on suppressing cracks in the casing.This research holds important theoretical and engineering significance in improving the quality of casing castings and reducing production costs.