Aerospace servo is a very important subsystem of motion execution in flight control system and servo products are characterized by small batch or various types. With the more rapid development of new spacecrafts, the servo performance requirements have been much stricter and manufacturing cycle has been much shorter. Therefore, it is very necessary to develop the novel design and manufacturing tools as new alternatives to conventional ones. For electrohydraulic servo, the mechanical shell of hydraulic actuator is typically characterized by being full of complex hydraulic paths for oil flowing inside itself. However, it is very difficult to drill these oil paths in a restricted interior space of shell. Rapid prototyping and manufacturing (RPM) technology can eliminate the difficult cutting for these oil paths and a prototype of hydraulic actuator can be produced directly from its CAD model by simplifying the mechanical machining process to 2D layer adding process. This paper presents an integrated system of RPM for servo products in order to reduce substantially product development time and improve flexibility for manufacturing in small batch or various types. The key techniques comprising rapid prototyping, tooling, precise casting and precision control are dissertated and verified successfully by casting the mechanical actuator shells following the original prototypes. These physical entities of special servo mechanical parts are produced directly and rapidly from CAD model in order to meet the requirements of visualization, sample trial-manufacture, performance evaluation and small batch manufacturing for various types.
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