Additive manufacturing and foundry innovation

Additive manufacturing is expected to transform and upgrade the traditional foundry industry to realize the integrated manufacturing and rapid and low-cost development of high-performance components with complex shapes. The additive manufacturing technology commonly applied in casting mold preparation (fusible molds, sand molds/cores and ceramic cores) mainly includes selective laser sintering (SLS) and binder injection three-dimensional printing (3DP). In this work, the research status of SLS/3DP-casting processes on material preparation, equipment development, process optimization, simulation and application cases in aerospace, automotive and other fields were elaborated. Finally, the developing trends of the additive manufacturing technology in the future of foundry field are introduced, including multi-material sand molds (metal core included), ceramic core-shell integration and die-casting dies with conformal cooling runners.