Direct and Indirect Laser Sintering of Metals

Manufacturing functional prototypes and tools using conventional methods usually is a time consuming procedure with multiple steps. The pressure to get products to market faster has resulted in the creation of several Rapid Prototyping (RP) techniques. However, potentially one of the most important areas of Rapid Manufacturing (RM) technology lies in the field of Rapid Tooling (RT).
Layer manufacture technologies are gaining increasing attention in the manufacturing sector for the production of polymer mould tooling. Layer manufacture techniques can be used in this potential manufacturing area to produce tooling either indirectly or directly, and powder metal based layer manufacture systems are considered an effective way of producing rapid tooling.
Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) is one of available layer manufacture technologies. SLS is a sintering process in which shaped parts are built up layer by layer from bottom to top of powder material. A laser beam scans the powder layer, filling in the outline of each layers CAD-image, and heats the selected powder to fuse it.
This work reports the results of an experimental study examining the potential of layer manufacturing processes to deliver production metal tooling for manufacture of polymer components. Characterisation of indirect selective laser sintering and direct selective laser sintering to provide the metal tooling is reported. Three main areas were addressed during the study: mechanical strength, accuracy, and build rate. Overviews of the results from the studies are presented. Two materials (RapidSteel 2.0 and special grade of highspeed steel) and also two generations of SLS machines Sinterstation 2000 and sinterstation research machine, which was constructed in Leeds) were used during this work.