Investigation of the cooling of spin-casting moulds

Spin casting is being used widely in the prototyping industry as a secondary process to convert a master model into a functional metal or plastic part. The main problem of the spin-casting process is the poor thermal conductivity of silicone rubber as mould material––which leads to a long cooling time between casting processes, a short lifespan of the mould and therefore quality problems with respect to the final product. In order to address these problems different cooling methods, such as the λ–ρC method and latent heat storage method, have been developed, investigated experimentally and described in this paper. Experimental results show that some metals––such as plain carbon steel––can be used to control the thermal process in spin casting effectively.