3D-Printed Tooling for Lost-Foam Casting

An applied research collaboration with Flowserve carried out during my Ph.D., exploring whether additive manufacturing could lower the cost of producing mold patterns for lost-foam casting.

The problem

Conventional pattern tooling for lost-foam casting is expensive and slow to iterate. The question was whether 3D-printed patterns could stand in without sacrificing the quality of the cast part.

The work

We designed and fabricated printed mold patterns, then evaluated them against the conventional process on target industrial components, looking at cost, lead time, and the practicality of swapping printed patterns into an existing casting workflow.

Result

The research demonstrated roughly a 40% manufacturing cost reduction on the target components versus conventional mold-making, pointing to additive patterning as a viable low-cost route for short-run and prototype castings.