Applications of rapid prototyping are expanding to new domains. This is particularly true of the selective laser sintering (SLS) process. In order for that process to be competitive and become a strong candidate for new applications, such as rapid manufacturing, the material used needs to be improved. The aim of the work presented in this thesis was to develop a new composite material made up of Polyamide 12 (a common SLS material) and cement, an inexpensive additive, for the purpose of improving the mechanical properties, as well as reducing the cost of the sintered components. An experimental study was conducted of the thermal properties of the cement-Polyamide 12 composite material with different proportions of cement and Polyamide 12. The purpose of the study was to determine optimal SLS parameters to produce good quality fabricated SLS specimens. The research also involved an experimental investigation of the mechanical properties (Young‟s modulus, tensile, flexural, compression and impact strengths, and density) as a function of the proportion of cement additive to Polyamide 12. Finally, a method of quickly and inexpensively producing test specimens by casting instead of using SLS was developed and experiments conducted to demonstrate the similarity in properties between cast and SLS specimens. II This research has shown that adding cement to Polyamide 12 yields a composite material that enables the production of sintered specimens with mechanical properties that are superior to those of pure Polyamide 12 specimens. As cement is much cheaper than Polyamide 12, the composite material is also obviously less expensive than pure Polyamide 12.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:567121 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Aldahsh, Saleh |
| Publisher | Cardiff University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://orca.cf.ac.uk/10948/ |
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