COMPARISON OF PROTOTYPING COSTS BETWEEN ADDITIVE AND CLASSICAL MANUFACTURING TECHNIQUES
Pınar Demircioğlu İsmail Böğrekçi Neslihan Demir Utku Köse
AbstractMolding process is one of the mostly used manufacturing techniques. Conventional molds are generally made in woods. These are mostly produced by CNC machine. Small changes in the design requires remolding. This takes time and costs a lot. Additive manufacturing (AM) may lower the design and optimization costs. This study aims to compare prototyping costs between additive and classical manufacturing techniques for producing mold of Agitator Propeller. The Computer Aided Design (CAD) model were prepared using Autodesk Inventor Software. Then, the model was exported as STL file format for rapid prototyping. Hypercube Evolution desktop type 3D printer with 90-300 microns layer height manufacturing capacity was used to produce the sample. The printer settings were prepared with Cura software. Infill density and layer height of specimen were determined as 20% and 200 microns, respectively. The heated bed temperature was selected as 60°C to increase bonding and surface quality. The produced propellers were used as manufacturing the casting molds. The model development using wood and 3D printing were compared in terms of technical and economical aspects. Dimensional accuracy was measured with a caliper. The cost effectiveness analysis was systematically conducted using Excel. The results from the cost-benefit analysis indicated that using 3D printers lowered the prototyping cost as much as three times.