Post- processing of ABS replicas with vapour smoothing for investment casting applications.

Abstract

The need of customized products with tight dimensional tolerances, lower production cost and shorter lead times led to the development of additive manufacturing techniques like fused deposition modelling (FDM). The digitally fabricated ABS patterns prepared on FDM needs to be processed by vapour smoothing (VS) in order to reduce the surface roughness. The post-processing of FDM-based patterns/replicas with VS increases their density, which increases heat input and complexities in ash removal during burnout stage from ceramic shell in investment casting (IC). This study highlights the step-by-step procedure for controlling the density of master patterns/replicas after processing with VS for IC applications.