Materials Development and Evaluation of Selective Laser Sintering Manufacturing Applications

This report summarizes the FY96 accomplishments for CRADA No. LA95C10254, "Materials Development and Evaluation of Laser Sintering Manufacturing Applications". To research the potential for processing additional materials using DTM Corporations Selective Laser Sintering rapid prototyping technology and evaluate the capability for rapid manufacturing applications, the following materials were processed experimentally using the Sinterstation 2000 platform; Linear Low Density Polyethylene thermoplastic; Polypropylene thermoplastic; Polysulfone thermoplastic; Polymethylpentene (TPX) thermoplastic; Carbon microsphere filled nylon 11; "APO-BMI" Apocure bismaleimide thermoset polyimide glass m.icrosphere filled and carbon microsphere filled formulations; and 900-24 physical properties mock for plastic bonded TATB high explosive These materials have been successfully processed to a "proof of concept" level or better (with the exception of No. 7). While none of these materials have been introduced as a standard product as of this date, the potential to do so is viable. Present status of materials processing efforts is presented in Section A 2.0. Some recent efforts in manufacturing applications is discussed in Section A 4.0.