This is a combination of sand mold casting and lost-foam casting, which is also called an evaporative-pattern casting. For example, a foamed polystyrene pattern is surrounded by sand, much like a wood mold. Then, pouring metal into the sand mold vaporizes the foamed polystyrene on contact. Consequently, the metallic workpiece with the same shape of the pattern can be obtained.
Published in Chapter:
Industrial Machining Robot with Incorporated Robotic CAM System
Fusaomi Nagata (Tokyo University of Science, Japan), Akimasa Otsuka (Tokyo University of Science, Japan), Keigo Watanabe (Okayama University, Japan),
Maki K. Habib (The American University in Cairo, Egypt), and Takamasa Kusano (SOLIC Co., Ltd., Japan)
Copyright: © 2015
|Pages: 25
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-7387-8.ch025
Abstract
This chapter first describes the robotic CAM system proposed from the viewpoint of robotic servo controller for an industrial robot RV1A. Then, a reverse post-processor is proposed for the robotic CAM system to online generate the original CL data from the NC data post-processed for a five-axis NC machine tool with a tilting head. Next, an application of the industrial robot with incorporated the robotic CAM system is introduced. The application is developed to efficiently machine foamed polystyrene patterns which are typically used for master pattern of sand mold or for lost-foam pattern for full mold casting (i.e., lost-foam casting). If the target material is limited to such foamed polystyrenes, it is expected that the developed machining robot is superior to conventional NC machine tools in terms of introduction cost, running cost, compactness, and easiness of use. Finally, promising machining results of foamed polystyrene materials are shown.