A study of tool design for minimization of heat-affected zone in rapid heat ablation process

Rapid prototyping and manufacturing (RPM) technologies have been widely adopted by the industry because of the potential of these technologies to rapidly fabricate three-dimensional parts with geometrical complexity from a CAD model in a CAD/CAM environment. Machining processes as RPM technologies have shown the fundamental disadvantages of unsatisfactory cutting mechanisms, such as excessive cutting time and leftover material caused by the cutting mechanism. Therefore, a new rapid manufacturing process using the heated tool, rapid heat ablation (RHA) process, has been developed with a new material removal method in order to solve the problems. In this paper, the tool for the RHA process is devised to minimize the heat-affected zone and also investigated for verification. TRIZ well known as creative problem solving method is applied to resolve the contradictive requirements of the tool. The devised tool has tangential grooves on the side of the tool separated into two regions for minimization of the heat-affected zone. For the detailed design of the tool, numerical model is established with several assumptions. Numerical and experimental results show that the devised tool fulfils its requirements. It demonstrates the practicality of the tool that three-dimensional shapes are ablated using the heated tool with tangential grooves. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.