Abstract
Rapid sand casting technology is a growing field of
additive manufacturing (AM) or three-dimensional
printing. Applications of rapid sand casting include
amongst other the production of foundry sand moulds and
cores. The properties of parts produced by rapid sand
casting technologies have been assessed in previous
studies including dimensional accuracy, surface finish and
strength. However, very little attention has been devoted
to the statistical variability of mechanical properties of
three-dimensional printed sand components. This
knowledge is critical to ascertain the process capability of
rapid casting technologies for consistent production of
foundry parts and ultimately the quality of castings. To
that end, the statistical variability of foundry properties of
sand parts produced on a three- dimensional printer was
assessed in this study. Descriptive statistical analysis
results show that sand samples produced by threedimensional
printing are not always consistent in terms of
mechanical properties. The highest variability of
mechanical properties in sand samples was found with the
tensile strength. The bend strength in sand samples was
found to have the lowest variability with a symmetrical
normal distribution of data.