A Cost-Effective Methodology to Perform Customized Moulding of Cork Agglomerates
D. Afonso, R. Alves de Sousa, R. Torcato
The use of cork–polymer composites allows great design possibilities, combining the advantages of the natural material and melt based technologies to achieve unique part properties. An attractive processing technique is compression moulding for being a free form low waste process, and allowing the recyclability of other cork products waste. Still, the process requires the development of medium to high complexity tools, restricting the process to medium to high production volumes. This research tests the development of low cost solutions for the development of cork compression moulding tools using sheet metal. Single point incremental forming is used as a rapid tooling process for the manufacture of cork compression moulding tools. A simple part is used as a case study example and the mould is design and build while defining general guidelines for sheet metal low cost tooling. The developed tool is used in two steps moulding operation by compressing and locking the mould before heat curing the resin, proper for a low batch manufacture process. The tool integrity is checked and the moulded part is evaluated for quality before final considerations are set.
Keywords
Compression Moulding, Cork, Rapid Tooling, SPIF
Published online 9/22/2017, 6 pages
Copyright © 2017 by the author(s)
Published under license by Materials Research Forum LLC., Millersville PA, USA
Citation: D. Afonso, R. Alves de Sousa, R. Torcato, ‘A Cost-Effective Methodology to Perform Customized Moulding of Cork Agglomerates’, Materials Research Proceedings, Vol. 3, pp 40-45, 2017
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.21741/9781945291418-6
The article was published as article 6 of the book Cork Science and its Applications
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