A review of rapid prototyping integrated investment casting processes

Investment casting is competitive with all other casting processes where the size of the product is within a mutually castable range. Though investment casting is used to produce metal parts of any intricate shapes with excellent surface finish, it suffers from long lead time and high tooling costs, which makes it uneconomical for the production of either single casting, or small and medium production units. These problems could be overcome by the applications of rapid prototyping and rapid tooling technologies for low-volume investment casting production runs. The present article analyzes different classifications of rapid prototyping techniques and it reviews various investigations made on the usability of rapid prototyping- and rapid tooling-integrated investment casting process, with their advantages and limitations. The emerging areas of applications of rapid prototyping like dentistry, jewelry, surgical implants, turbine blades, etc., are accordingly discussed. Further, an elaborate discussion is made on the application of newer technologies for directly developing ceramic shells. This article also emphasizes on various future scopes possible in rapid prototyping-integrated investment casting process.