Control System of Paving stock Mechanism of New-type Device about

Rapid Prototyping Manufacturing for Ceramic Parts

Dong-qiang Gao, Zhen-ya Tian, Nan Guo, Da-jian Hao
(Institute of Mechanical & Electrical, Shaanxi University of Science & Technology, Xi’an
710021, China)
Abstract ： Development of the machine tools about rapid prototyping manufacturing for
ceramic parts had made it possible to shorten the manufacturing period of ceramic parts and the
enterprise’s productivity efficiency. In this paper, the development situation of the machine tools
about rapid prototyping manufacturing for ceramic parts was introduced. A new-style device about
rapid prototyping manufacturing for ceramic parts which was based on the technology of
laminated coalition and rapid concreting prototyping for ceramic parts was designed. The basic
constitutions, technical processing and working principle of the paving stock mechanism of the
device had also been described. PLC (programmable logic controller) was applied in the paving
stock mechanism for controlling and the PLC system operated well which satisfied the demand of
automatic manufacturing for ceramic parts, and improved the work efficiency.
Key words: rapid prototyping manufacturing; ceramic parts; paving stock mechanism; PLC
0 Introduction

Advanced ceramics has lots of advantages such as high temperature resistance, corrosion
resistance, high strength and rigidity that it has been applied widely in many fields. In recent two
decade years, with development of rapid prototyping manufacturing for ceramic parts, RPM
technologies for ceramic parts are becoming the focus of the advanced manufacturing field. In
general, the design of RPM equipments for ceramic parts has made some progress, which has been
widely used in product manufacturing line. However, there are also some shortcomings with them,
such as high-priced of the equipment, investment of high cost, squandering serious material and so
on. For example, cost of the laser RPM equipment for ceramic parts is very expensive; the
equipment of IJP (ink jet printing) and FDM (fused deposition modeling) have double commands
of ceramic slurry, Quality of products is also difficult to be control [1]. So, it is necessary to
develop new device or technology to solve above problems and satisfied the commands of the
enterprises.
The development of the RPM equipment for ceramics was relied on the technology of laminated
coalition and rapid concreting prototyping for ceramic parts which was proposed by professor of
Xiufeng Wang[2]. Advantages of the equipment were low cost, small investment scale, extensive
raw material and operation well. In this paper, the PLC control system was applied in the paving
stock mechanism of RPM equipment for ceramic parts. Comparing to the other control methods,
PLC control system was a higher reliability system, which had stronger working function and was
easy to be installed. PLC control system was operating well and working effectively had been
improved.
1 Stock mechanism working principle
1.1 Constitution of the paving slurry mechanism
The structure of the paving slurry mechanism is as follow: paving slurry platform 3, portable
hopper 11, wiping device 14, heating plant 6, horizontal movement device 1, elevating gear of the
paving slurry platform 8 and stirring device. The paving stock mechanism of the new-style
machine tool about rapid prototyping manufacturing for ceramic parts is showed in Fig.1.
 Paving slurry platform 3 operates in vertical direction which is controlled by elevating gear

Fig.1 The paving stock mechanism of the new-style machine tool about rapid prototyping
manufacturing for ceramic parts
1. horizontal movement device 2.right limit switch 3. paving slurry platform 4. x direction parallels 5. x direction feed
screw 6. heating plant 7. x direction stepping motor 8. elevating gear of the paving slurry platform 9.y direction feed
screw 10. elevating driving motor 11.hopper 12. y direction parallels 13.x direction parallels 14.wiping device

(stepping motor 10 drives the feed screw to run at the vertical position). Portable hopper realizes
level feed while feed screw 5 is driven by stepping motor 7. Motor controls the y direction
parallels to realize the level feed of the working platform. Limit switch was installed between the
parallels and the feed screw, which was able to control the route scope of the Portable hopper
successfully.
Portable hopper is constituted of the hopper crust and slurry hopper. Schematic illustration of
the hopper crust is showed in Fig.2. The processing of the Stirring device is as follow: stirring
motor1 drives stirring driving gear 2 to run, and then stirring driving gear 2 goes into mesh with
the stirring follower gear1 (showed in Fig.3), stirring shaft is connect with the stirring follower
gear1 which stirring shaft 2 turns with. Stirring movement can keep slurries even and no sediment.
Fig.3 shows Schematic illustration of the slurry hopper. Hopper outlet is loose-leaf controlled by
electromagnetic relay. When the ceramic slurry is paved, corresponding Hopper outlet of ceramic
slurry hopper opened, at the same time, the wax slurry Hopper outlet closed. In the same way,
while hopper outlet of wax slurry hopper opened, hopper outlet of ceramic slurry hopper closed.
Slurry hopper hooks at the notch. Wax slurry hopper structure is same to ceramic slurry hopper.

1 2
4

1 2

Fig.3 Schematic illustration of the slurry hopper

Fig.2 Schematic illustration of the hopper crust 1.stirring driven gear 2.stirring shaft 3.slurry outlet
1.srring motor 2. stirring driving gear 4.hook
 Wiping device is used to wipe redundant wax and ceramic slurry, which is to keep the wax
platform and the ceramic slurry platform level. Wax slurry is heated by the heating plant which
can be used to keep the wax slurry melt as well as avoids wax sticking to the wiping device. It can
also keep the wax slurry paving evenly.
There is a stirring shaft in the wax and ceramic slurry hopper in each which was driven by gear
mechanisms. The gear mechanisms operation were as follow: motor drives the driving gear to turn
by shaft coupling, then the driving gear goes into mesh with driven gears which are installed
respectively in the terminal of the two stirring shaft to drives the stirring shafts synchronism.
When it is necessary to mill CAD slicing shape on the solidify wax platform with using miller,
PLC control system send data message to upper control computer through I/O interface, upper
control computer sends CNC codes to NC milling tool which is used to control the miller to carve
the CAD slicing shape on the wax platform. When above steps have been completed, upper
control computer send commands to PLC for continuing the next step control. So, it has
established the communication of upper control computer and PLC.
1.2 Technology processing of the paving slurry mechanism
In order to make the paving slurry mechanism can operate well and be better to realize PLC
control of it. It is required to analyze the action of the mechanism. The paving mechanism action
of the RPM device for ceramic parts is as follow: (1) in the initialization of the system (slurry
hopper stopped in position, feed screws and milling cutter stopped rotary movement), working
platform reset, horizontal movement motor started. It was normal rotation to drive the wax slurry
hopper to move left direction which was used to paving wax slurry. During the paving wax slurry
cycle, wax slurry was stirred and heated by stirring device and heat plant. (2) When the wax slurry
hopper was connect with left limit switch, the wax slurry hopper closed, motor rotated at the
negative direction return to initialization position. (3) When last step has completed, wax was
freezing about 30 seconds. (4) When the wax slurry has freeze to the wax platform, motor is
normal rotation and milling cutter moved down to mill wax platform. (5) When previous step has
finished, milling cutter moved up. (6) Milling cutter returned to initialization position, at the same
time, horizontal movement is normal rotation to drive the ceramic slurry hopper moved left
direction to pave ceramic slurry. (7) When the ceramic slurry hopper was connect with left limit
switch, ceramic slurry hopper closed, motor rotated at the negative direction return to initialization
position. (8) Elevating driving motor rotated at the negative direction, motor droved the working
platform to reduce 2 mm. (9) until the working platform was in initialization position, one cycle of
the processing had been completed. Repeat the above processing cycle until the ceramic blank was
done, then sintered it, ceramic part was gained at once.
1.3 Realization of control system
In order to meet the command of the processing, the PLC control system has four motors: M1,
M2, M3, M4.M1 is used to drag the slurry hoppers to move, M2 is used to control the movement
of the milling cutter. M3 and M4 are used to control the elevator of the working platform and
stirring slurry respectively.SQ1, SQ2 are level travel limit switch and SQ3, SQ4 is vertical limit
switch. When key button is pressed, relay coil KM1 is key on and motor drives the feed screw to
make slurry hoppers move; when the hoppers make contact with the limit switch SQ2, KM1 is
current failure and KM2 is key on, motor drag the hopper to return until which presses SQ1.
Milling cutter was moving down when it touched with vertical limit switch SQ4, which
 ①
start

④ ③
Milling cutter
rotate ②

heat and N Right limit

stirring switch

Milling
over
Y
hoppers travel
left wax hopper Y
open
Work Table
Milling cutter Decline 2mm
N return

Left limit N
switch N

initializatio Decline in
n position position

Hopper travel Wax hopper Y

right closed

N Hoppers travel Ceramic slurry

left hopper open
Automation
stop

Right limit
switch N N

Y
Left limit
switch
Wax slurry
freeze
Automatio
n end
N

Reckon by Hoppers travel Ceramic slurry Y

time 30s right hopper closed
Y

N End

① ②
④ ③

Fig.2 The technical process of the paving stock mechanism

returned back to the initialization position. When milling cutter pressed the vertical limit switch
SQ3, it had completed a travel. During this cycle, milling process was control by CNC control
system, when milling wax platform had been finished, CNC system send command to PLC control
system, milling cutter moved up.
In order to keep safe, movement interferes which might happened were interlocked, for
example, during all cycle, heating and stirring were commanded and wax slurry hopper and
ceramic slurry hopper couldn’t open or closed at the same time, so the normal or negative rotate of
motor M1 needed to be interlocked as well as the elevating driving motor.
For the sake of the slurries in hopper were not to make cool, heater was used to heat slurries.
Temperature was control at about 95℃.
The number of the discrete I/O was 16 of the control system, discrete input number was 7, and
discrete output number was 9. SIMATIC S7-200 PLC was controlled. Outer wiring diagram and
I/0 distribute table were in Fig.4 and table1.
Tab.1 I/0 distribute table
number Components and parts name PLC address In the design of software,
1 Start press SB1 I0.0
2 Stop press SB2 I0.1 first 3D models of ceramic part
3 Left limit switch SQ1 I0.2 were drafted by 3D molding
4 Right limit switch SQ2 I0.3
5 Milling cutter down limit switch I0.4 software, and then 3D models
SQ3 were sliced to be laminas which
6 Milling cutter up limit switch I0.5
SQ4 had a certain thickness. Shape and
7 FR I0.6 lamina for every layer was gained
8 KM1 Q0.0
9 KM2 Q0.1 which produced CNC data
10 KM3 Q0.2 messages which were related with
11 KM4 Q0.3
RPM processing. Upper computer
12 KM5 Q0.4
sent commands to the CNC RPM
13 KM6 Q0.5
14 Stirring K4 Q0.6 subsystem which control milling
15 Wax hopper open K2 Q0.7 cutter to mill shape of the correct
16 ceramic hopper open K3 Q1.0 layer of 3D model at the paved
concreting wax platform. Then
main computer sent command to PLC to control paving slurry mechanism to fill ceramic slurry in
the hollow of the milled concreting wax platform and monitored the status of prototyping, if
necessary. Repeated the before-mentioned, ceramic part was produced finally.
2 Control system character

(1)On the one hand, PLC system of paving slurry system

was contact with upper computer which accepted the CNC
data and movement parameter to control RPM device. On
the other hand, PLC system controlled RPM device motion
status.
(2) Combining of the CNC and RPM technology that
integrated the PLC control system of paving slurry to CNC
control system had been realized. It also can realize control
prototype accurately and take advantage of each advantage.
(3) The system was consisting of three basic parts: three

Fig.5 Outer wiring diagram

dimensions CAD subsystem, CNC form milling subsystem and paving slurry mechanism PLC
control subsystem. Three dimensions CAD subsystem was used to establish model of ceramic
parts and auto slicing sheet function was added. CNC form milling subsystem’s main function was
used to transform 3D model slicing sheet to CNC control code and control milling cutter to mill
each shape of slicing sheet. Paving slurry mechanism PLC control subsystem was to control slurry
hoppers and worktable to pave ceramic and wax slurries.
(4) The price of equipments for RPM was preciousness, the application of PLC control technology
which had been used in the paving slurry mechanism of ceramic RPM device can reduce the cost
of ceramic RPM device and it had better extension value.
5 Summarization

Testing showed that the PLC control system had better reliability, stability and compatibility. It
was easy to handing operation and realized ceramic parts rapid production. The ceramic parts had
better prototyping accuracy which can satisfy the need of market.

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作 者 简 介 ： 高 东 强 （ 1960- ） ， 男 ， 陕 西 大 荔 人 ， 教 授 ， 硕 士 生 导 师 ， 从 事 凸 轮 、
CAD/CAM、逆向工程和快速成型的研究。

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技术有限公司,田振亚（收）,528437
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