Processing complex shapes

In situ film Complex process Complex shapes... 

Natural bone ECM composite consists of type I collagen and HA. The HA forms orderly deposits within the nanofibrous collagen matrix and also initiates oseoconductivity and bone bonding ability. However, the use of HA alone is limited due to brittleness and difficulty to process complex shapes for bone TE. 

High material costs (resin film) Difficult to process complex shaped parts... 

Small, complex-shaped glass articles such as thread guides for the textile industry and television gun mounts for the electronics industry are made by the multiform process. The dry-milled powder is mixed with an inorganic binder and a fluid vehicle, and then atomi2ed by a spray dryer into small, dried agglomerates of glass powder and binder with good flow characteristics. They are subsequently pressed to the desired shape and fired. 

Metal injection mol ding (MIM) holds great promise for producing complex shapes in large quantities. Spray forming, a single-step gas atomization and deposition process, produces near-net shape products. In this process droplets of molten metal are coUected and soHdifted onto a substrate. Potential appHcations include tool steel end mills, superalloy tubes, and aerospace turbine disks (6,7). 

Slip Casting. SHp casting (38,40—42,45,59—62), the process in which a cast is formed from a slurry using a porous mold, is used to form sinks and other sanitary ware, figurines, refractory cmcibles, porous thermal insulation, fine china, and complex shape stmctural ceramics such as multivane rotors. 

Most PET botties are produced by injection blow mol ding (71) the resin over a steel-core rod. The neck of the bottie is formed with the proper shape to receive closures and resin is provided around the temperature-conditioned rod for the blowing step. The rod with the resin is indexed to the mold, and the resin is blown away from the rod against the mold walls, where it cools to form the transparent bottie. The finished bottie is ejected and the rod is moved again to the injection-molding station. This process is favored for single cylindrical botties, but cannot be used for more complex shapes such as botties with handles. 

Stainless Steel There are more than 70 standard types of stainless steel and many special alloys. These steels are produced in the wrought form (AISI types) and as cast alloys [Alloy Casting Institute (ACI) types]. Gener y, all are iron-based, with 12 to 30 percent chromium, 0 to 22 percent nickel, and minor amounts of carbon, niobium (columbium), copper, molybdenum, selenium, tantalum, and titanium. These alloys are veiy popular in the process industries. They are heat- and corrosion-resistant, noncontaminating, and easily fabricated into complex shapes. 

Similar treatments can be used for all sorts of two-dimensional problems for calculating the plastic collapse load of structures of complex shape, and for analysing metal-working processes like forging, rolling and sheet drawing. 

In the past a limitation on this process was that it tended to be restricted to shapes which were symmetrical about an axis of rotation and from which the mandrel could be easily extracted. However, in recent years there have been major advances through the use of collapsible or expendable cores and in particular through the development of computer-controlled winding equipment. The latter has opened the door to a whole new range of products which can be filament wound - for example, space-frame structures. Braiding machines for complex shapes are shown in Fig. 4.76. 

Nickel is also widely used as an electrodeposited underlay to chromium on chromium-plated articles, reinforcing the protection against corrosion provided by the thin chromium surface layer. Additionally the production of articles of complex shape to close dimensional tolerances in nickel by electroforming —a high-speed electrodeposition process —has attracted considerable interest. Electrodeposition of nickel and the properties of electro-deposited coatings containing nickel are dealt with in greater detail in Section 14.7. 

Articles of complex shape may be impossible to electroplate satisfactorily, and electroless nickel (see Section 12.5) may be useful in providing a relatively uniform protective coating. Even so, the considerations of access of cleaning and process solutions, and retention/draining of all process solutions, still apply. 

A major advantage of the electroless nickel process is that deposition takes place at an almost uniform rate over surfaces of complex shape. Thus, electroless nickel can readily be applied to internal plating of tubes, valves, containers and other parts having deeply undercut surfaces where nickel coating by electrodeposition would be very difficult and costly. The resistance to corrosion of the coatings and their special mechanical properties also offer advantages in many instances where electrodeposited nickel could be applied without difficulty. 

Plastics are no different in this respect than other materials. If steel, aluminum, and ceramics were to be made into a different complex shapes and no prior history on their behavior for that processing shape existed, a period of trial and error would be required to ensure their meeting the required measurements. If relevant processing information or experience did exist, it would be possible for these metallic (or plastic) products to meet the requirements with the first product produced. Experience on new steel shapes always took trial and error time that included different shaped high pressure hydraulic steel cylinders that failed in service when used in a new injection molding hydraulically operating machine (author s experience). 

As an example stereolithography is a 3-D rapid process that produces automatically simple to very complex shaped models in plastic. Basically it is a method of building successive layers across sections of pho-topolymerized plastics on top of each other until all the thin printed layers can be joined together to form a whole product. The chemical key to the process, photopolymerization, is a well established technology in which a photo initiator absorbs UV energy to form free radicals that then initiate the polymerization of the liquid monomers. The degree... 

---