Abstract

With the emergence of the 3D CAD, it is possible to create a physical part directly from a digital model by accumulating layers of a given material. The technology is being widely used for checking designs, to create master models for rapid tooling, and for reverse engineering. However, in general, a model created by rapid prototyping technology is made of soft material that cannot be used as mass prouduction hard tool. Newly developed powder casting is suitable for rapid-manufacturing metallic tools. Powder casting can serve as a promising rapid tooling method because of high density characteristics and low dimensional shrinkage below 0.1% during sintering and infiltration. Through this process, we have realized significant time and cost savings eliminating the expense of conventional prototype tooling process.