Additive Manufacturing for Tooling Applications (AM-Tool) in conjunction with IComp, AIT and UCD

Additive Manufacturing for Tooling Applications

The primary aim of this project is to exploit the potential of additive manufacturing for the rapid development of high quality composite tooling solutions using paper and polymer materials.

Project Goals

Additive manufacturing of dry fibre preform and resin transfer moulding tooling for low volume, complex geometry, composite components. Additive manufacturing of mould inserts for injection over-moulding of hybrid composite components. Industrial partners include Henkel Ireland, Bombardier Aerospace, Mafic, EJ Access Solutions, EireComposites and CCP Gransden.

Results

An automated conformal cooling channel code has been developed in MATLAB, in conjunction with a thermal and structural finite element model. Channel design optimisation is performed based on time to cool the part, with variation of factors including channel spacing and distance to the part