Manufacturing of PMMA Cam Shaft by Rapid Prototyping

Rapid prototyping is a technique used to quickly fabricate an assembly, components or parts using three-dimensional Computer Aided Design and Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAD-CAM). It is an additive layer manufacturing technology. Cam shaft is a component in which a set of cams becomes an integral part to a shaft placed in its respective positions and directions according to the application of the particular cam shaft. These cam shafts are used in many industries especially in automobile, aerospace and marine industries. They are used in the engines of any automotive. In the engines these cam shafts are used for operating the inlet valves and outlet valves. These cam shafts are to be precisely manufactured in order to avoid the timing errors in opening and closing of the ports. So these camshafts are mostly machined and manufactured by computer operated machine systems. In these systems the various process of machining are listed and arranged in a specific order and connected to a computer. So the raw material undergoes several processes in several machines during the manufacture and finally the cam shaft is obtained. The main advantage of this type of manufacturing is that more number of precise components is obtained. Rapid prototyping process is one of the newly emerging manufacturing processes that could be used to manufacture cam shaft precisely. Rapid prototyping uses the process additive manufacturing in which the molten raw material is added layer by layer. The major problem in the rapid prototyping process is inability to use metals. But there are somematerials that possess the properties of metals and also have the ability to be used in rapid prototyping process. The material which is best suited for camshaft manufacturing using rapid prototyping was poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA).Using this method of manufacturing process the space required and the cost required for manufacturing can be reduced. Performanceof the conventionally manufactured cam shaft and cam shaft manufactured by rapid prototyping can be compared and analysed. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.