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3DP Three dimensional printing
ABS Acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene
AM Additive manufacturing
BPM Ballistic Particle manufacturing
CAD Computer-aided design
DMLS Direct metal laser sintering
DSPC Direct shell production casting
EARP European action on rapid prototyping
EOS Electro optical system
FDM Fused deposition modelling
IC Investment casting
IT International tolerance
LENS Laser engineered net shaping
LOM Laminated object manufacturing
MMII Model maker II
MSFC Marshal Space Flight Center
PS Polystyrene
RC Rapid casting
RCT Rapid casting technique
RIC Rapid investment casting
RP&T Rapid prototyping and tooling
RTV Room temperature vulcanizing
SL Stereolithography
SLS Selective laser sintering
ZCorp ZCorporation
1 Introduction
After nearly 20 years of research, development and use, the additive manufacturing (AM) industry continues to grow with the addition of new technologies, methods and applications ([67] Wohlers, 2007). In the early development of AM technologies, the emphasis was directed towards the creation of "touch-and-feel" models to support the design ([12] Chua et al. , 1998). But, because of frequent changing requirements of manufacturing industry due to short product life cycles, fickle consumer demands, complex shaped designs, higher quality, reducing the cost and time to market for new product and shorter product development times, industry has been searching solutions for fabricating direct metal parts since the earliest day of AM. Presently, direct metal fabrication AM technologies (also called as rapid manufacturing) are used in a wide variety of industries, from automotive and aerospace to electronics and dentistry ([66] Wohlers, 2006). There are only few AM techniques available which can manufacture metal parts directly, but they are just the tip of the iceberg.
Although, direct manufacturing of metal parts with AM is not well developed, indirect methods have been found and shown feasible through the combination of AM and traditional metal casting ([17] Detlef et al. , 1999). The application of AM in metal casting process to produce metal cast parts is regarded as rapid casting (RC). The most important part for any casting process is to design and produce pattern for the production of moulds into which to cast metal. Further, for some casting processes (like sand casting), designing and preparation of core boxes and gating system upon which the overall quality of casting depends are most time consuming and costly process especially in case of complex design...