Design and Fabrication of Moulds using Additive Manufacturing for producing Silicone Rubber Products

Abstract: Now a days. additive Manufacturing is becoming a major part of the manufacturing industries all around the world. Even, it is still a developing field.Its main advantage is its ability to print different types of shapes, in different sizesand good quality. The additive manufacturing technologies is capable of bring down the costs of the manufacturing when compared to other traditional methodsof manufacturing. This technology gives the flexibility to making complex shapesaccording to the clients and customers requirements also this technology canreduce time and human effort/involvement needed in the manufacturing industries. Now 3D printing has more influence in Swedish market more than ever and thisthesis is a part of a project of DiSAM – Digitalization of supply chain in Swedish Additive Manufacturing to implement 3D Printing into Swedish market. This thesis describe how advance materials and new manufacturingtechnologies can play a very important role in building the future and from thisstudy we are trying to find out whether the additive manufacturing technology can replace the traditional manufacturing process like injection molding. The main aim of the thesis is to design and fabricate a simple mould geometry for producing Silicone Rubber products using additive manufacturing and to assess the quality ofthe obtained product in terms of surface topography. Our project partner UnimerPlast & Gummi AB who is a major producer of plastics and rubber products is facing a problem in the production of silicone rubber products. They want to produce a mould for producing silicone rubber products using additivemanufacturing. In this thesis we had made the study in two parts, a design part and ananalysis part. In the design part we sorted out one material which is suitable for our application that is to produce a mould for making silicone products while in analysis part we made a study about the surface topology and its quality to see whether 3D printed moulds could produce silicone rubber products with same or better surface quality than the one which are produced using conventional injection moulding process. As a result of our study we came to know that high temperature resin can be used for making moulds to produce silicone products and only factor affecting the quality of the surface of mould or silicone product is built orientation and other factors like layer thickness, curing temperature and time does not have any impact on the surface quality.