Additive technology of soluble mold tooling for embedded devices in composite structures: A study on manufactured tolerances

Abstract Composite textiles have found widespread use and advantages in various industries and applications. The constant demand for high-quality products and services requires companies to minimize their manufacturing costs and delivery time in order to compete with general and niche marketplaces. Creation of molding and tooling options for advanced composites encompasses a large portion of fabrication time, making it a costly process and a restraining factor. This research discusses a preliminary investigation into the use and control of soluble polymer compounds and additive manufacturing to fabricate sacrificial molds. These molds suffer from dimensional errors due to several factors, which have also been characterized. The basic soluble mold of a composite is 3D printed to meet the desired dimensions and geometry of holistic structures or spliced components. The time taken to dissolve the mold depends on the rate of agitation of the solvent. This process is steered towards enabling the implantation of optoelectronic devices within the composite to provide a sensing capability for structural health monitoring. The shape deviation of the 3D printed mold is also studied and compared to its original dimensions to optimize the dimensional quality to produce dimensionally accurate parts of up to 0.02% error.