Study of the Heating-and-Pressing Separation Process of Laminated Object Manufacturing (LOM)

To improve hot-pressing process currently employed by the laminated object manufacturing (LOM), an innovated heating-and-pressing separation system is proposed, and heat transfer problems of this system is investigated. A thermal model is first established. It is solved numerically by the finite element method (FEM) software ANSYS, and verified by experiments. According to the numerical solution under various operating conditions, it is suggested that if the temperature and the moving speed of the heater are both increased, the depth of the heat affected laminates will be reduced. The processing time will be shortened and the manufacture efficiency will be promoted. Through analysis, it is concluded that, to obtain finished parts of high quality, the appropriate distance between the roller and the heater can be determined.