A technical note on the mechanical and physical characterization of selective laser sintered sand for rapid casting

Selective laser sintering (SLS) is used to produce sacrificial sand moulds for the foundry industry. The shape of the physical part is built by adding solid particles, made of quartz sand with a thin phenolic resin coating, layer-by-layer and heating it using a CO2 laser beam. The resin coating fuses and bonds form between the grains of sintered sand (green part). Thereafter, a post-curing treatment consolidates the part that acquires the final properties (brown part). Knowledge of the influence of process parameters on sand properties is fundamental in order to choose the most suitable process parameters to build resin-coated quartz sand part. In this study, brown part samples were produced in order to investigate their mechanical and physical properties for sand casting application. The experiments were carried out based on Taguchi method. In particular, the effects of the main process parameters and their interactions on the part permeability, compressive strength, and fracture morphology were estimated. The obtained results were tested with benchmark data of aluminum and steel casting applications.