Research On The Molding Technology And Application Of Aluminum-filled Epoxy Resin Rapid Tooling

Rapid tooling(RT) technology is a production of the development of both rapid prototyping(RP) and mould technology. With the development of modern society, more and more people prefer personalized-custom products, which requires injection mould to be more suitable for medium and small batch production. So aluminum-filled epoxy resin mould, with the characteristics of short manufacturing cycle and low manufacturing cost, gradually becomes a hot research topic. And this paper performed a research on the molding process of aluminum-filled epoxy resin mould technology based on RP.RP and RT techniques were introduced in the first chapter and we chose aluminum-filled epoxy resin mould based on RP parts to do the research. Then some details about the aluminum-filled epoxy resin molding process,for instance, the surface treatment to the RP, the choice of release agent and the mould design were researched in detail. Through the draft force experiments between the RP parts and aluminum-filled epoxy resin material, the surface smooth degree and draft angle of the RP parts were found to have a great influence on the draft force. So the draft difficulty should be reduced by changing the surface quality of the RP and setting its draft angle in the range of 3° to 5°. Through a paraffin research on the reset lever and thimble, the relationship between the best immersion time and the thickness of paraffin wax was obtained, which could be used to determine the size of reset lever and thimble on the RP. In the release agent selection experiments, oil and alcohol release agent were selected to do the comparison. It was found that alcohol release agent was superior to oily release agent in lowering draft force and improving the quality of mould surface. Through the study of shrinkage character of aluminum-filled epoxy resin material, the reason for it bulge lied in the curing speed of the material inside and outside, which had been solved during the experiments.Through the above research on aluminum-filled epoxy resin, the molding process was optimized systematically, and a set of lamp shell mould was made by the optimized process. Mould test experiment was carried on and the result showed that 100 products were injected before its surface becoming rough.