Sheet steel lamination for rapid manufacturing

Abstract A layer manufacturing method using thin sheet steel has been developed for the direct and rapid manufacturing of laminated steel products with high accuracy. The laminated steel products were manufactured by repeating two principal processes: (1) welding of thin sheet steels in a layer-by-layer fashion for heaping up a laminated workpiece; and (2) cutting of a CAD model cross section out of each welded sheet steel. The sheet steel used was 0.2 mm thick and was coated with U-alloy, a low melting point solder, 40 μm thick on the both sides of the sheet. A specially designed induction heater was used for welding the sheet steels using a hot press. For every repeat welding of a sheet of steel, the height of the workpiece was measured with a laser displacement meter. Then a personal CAM installed in a personal computer calculated a tool path at the height of the workpiece to cut the CAD model cross-section out of the top sheet steel. Finally laminated steel products were obtained by removing the unnecessary parts surrounding the products. In addition to the manufacturing of laminated steel products, the welding strength of U-alloy coated sheet steels and the strength of the laminated steel bars were evaluated by a peel test and a bending test, respectively.