Manufacturing core-boxes for foundry with rapid tooling technology

The casting design supported by computer aided design and computer aided engineering (CAD/CAE) with assistance of rapid tooling (RT) technology allows optimising the foundry tools before casting production. For some foundry tools development the reverse engineering (RE) allows to generate surface models from point clouds captured by 3D-scanning technique, and consequently this methodology permits to control or reengineering tools in a short development period. In this research and development study are presented some methodologies and technologies for rapid tooling development, i.e., by reverse engineering to control and reconstruct geometric models and rapid prototyping (RP) techniques to manufacture directly core-boxes for foundry. Using these methods and technologies, the time and cost of developing new foundry tools can be greatly reduced, which has been proven by practical applications. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.