Vacuum Casting High-Precision Plastic Prototypes Aerospace Industry Components PEEK Polycarbonate

Vacuum Casting High-Precision Plastic Prototypes Aerospace Industry Components PEEK Polycarbonate

Product Description:

In the aerospace industry, the demand for high-precision, lightweight, and durable components is critical. Vacuum casting is an essential technology used to produce prototypes and small-batch parts for various aerospace applications. PEEK (Polyetheretherketone) and Polycarbonate are two materials that offer exceptional performance in aerospace applications due to their strength, resistance to high temperatures, and lightweight properties.

PEEK is a high-performance engineering plastic that excels in demanding environments, making it ideal for use in aerospace components like engine parts, connectors, and structural elements that require superior strength-to-weight ratios and resistance to extreme temperatures. It is chemically resistant and can withstand the harsh conditions of high-pressure and high-temperature environments, making it perfect for applications such as aircraft engines, fuel systems, and electrical connectors. Polycarbonate, with its excellent impact resistance and optical clarity, is often used for aerospace components like window covers, cockpit displays, and lens housings, where both durability and transparency are required.

The vacuum casting process begins with the creation of a high-quality master model, which is then used to form a silicone mold. Liquid PEEK or Polycarbonate resin is poured into the mold, and a vacuum is applied to ensure complete filling and a flawless surface finish. This process allows for the production of complex aerospace components with high precision and excellent dimensional accuracy, which is crucial for ensuring the performance and safety of aircraft.

In aerospace applications, vacuum casting offers several advantages, including the ability to quickly produce prototypes for testing and design validation. It also enables manufacturers to create low-volume, high-precision components without the need for costly injection molding tooling. This makes it an ideal solution for producing prototype parts, testing new designs, or manufacturing limited runs of specialized aerospace components.

Applications of vacuum casting
Vacuum casting is one of the most cost-effective ways to produce high quality, low volume plastic parts which can be similar to injection moulding parts

The parts are especially suitable for form, fit and function tests during the embodiment design stages, where they can be used for marketing, field user testing and product design verification purposes

There are many Urethane casting resins commercially available that can be used to create parts to satisfy a wide range of design requirements such as temperature requirements, different surface textures, hardness, etc.

Materials are also available to create parts that are fully opaque, translucent or completely transparent

Sometimes high-quality wax masters can be made using vacuum casting for investment casting to increase the finer details of intricate features

Typical technical specification

Polyurethane (PU), the full name of polyurethane, is a polymer material formed by polyol and polyisocyanate through polycondensation reaction with excellent mechanical properties

[1], which is extremely plastic. Its synthesis can be traced back to 1937, when Professor Byaer first synthesised straight-chain linear polyurethane resins using 1,6-hexanediisocyanate and 1,4-butanediol as raw materials

[2]. Several major classifications of polyurethanes include polyether-type, polyester-type, polyimide-type, and polyurea-type, etc. They can be made into materials such as polyurethane plastics (mainly foams), polyurethane fibres (known as spandex in China), polyurethane rubbers and elastomers

[3].After nearly eighty years of technological development, this material has a wide range of applications involving products such as coatings, adhesives, fabric finishes, leather modifiers, polyurethane soft/rigid foam, elastomers, etc., which are used in the fields of textiles, construction, aviation, shipping, transportation, medicine, electronics, and so on.

Flexible polyurethane mainly has a linear structure with thermoplasticity, which has better stability, chemical resistance, resilience and mechanical properties than PVC foams, with less compression variability. Heat insulation, sound insulation, shock resistance, anti-virus performance is good. Therefore, it is used as packaging, sound insulation and filtration materials. Rigid polyurethane plastic is lightweight, sound insulation, superior thermal insulation performance, chemical resistance, good electrical properties, easy processing, low water absorption. It is mainly used in construction, automotive, aviation industry, thermal insulation structure materials. Polyurethane elastomer performance between plastic and rubber, oil resistance, abrasion resistance, low temperature resistance, aging resistance, high hardness, elasticity. It is mainly used in the shoe industry and the medical industry. Polyurethane can also make adhesives, coatings, synthetic leather, etc.

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