Feasibility of US Foundry Supply Chain Consumables for Three-Dimensional Sand Printing

摘要

The purpose of this study was to assess the performance characteristics of commercially available US foundry consumables for use in three-dimensional sand printers. The silica sands selected were 57 grain fineness number (GFN) and 70GFN. These sands were a high-purity round grain silica and had low trace contaminates, to reduce any possible influence from contaminates. The furan resin system was selected since it is the most widely utilized resin system for 3D printed sand in the USA. The furan resin system was from a domestic US foundry supplier. The printed samples were traditional tensile specimen and rectangle samples for the determination of density. The samples were examined for the following properties: tensile strength, loss on ignition, density, scratch hardness, and permeability. The results of this investigation confirmed that the tested domestic resin system and silica sands matched the original equipment manufacturer performance properties.