Ceramic Additive Manufacturing for Metal Castings

Additive Manufacturing can be applied to realize investment casting cores and molds with cost reductions specifically applicable to shorter production runs than may be justified using traditional methods.The patent pending CoreCastTM AM process proposed herein leverages the strengths of additive manufacturing for freeform shape definition with the benefits of traditional slurry-based investment casting shell and core production. It seeks to remove the constraints of conventional AM processes as applied to the production of cores and molds for the investment casting process.CoreCast AM is highly flexible and can utilize any AM process, and the process overcomes the deficiency of layer to layer anisotropy of existing AM processes that attempt to directly make molds and cores. It also overcomes several obstacles associated with direct layer-built ceramic additive manufacturing including offering substantially shorter binder burn out cycles, greater surface fidelity owing to an engineered powder size distribution, lower costs, and greater breadth of foundry acceptance due to material similarities with well-proven core and shell material systems.It is particularly promising for creating integral mold/core assemblies as found on aerospace turbine blades/buckets, and the proposed project will advance the technology from TRL-3 toward TRL-6 with benefits to both DOD and commercial businesses.