Development of a continuous fabrication system for a metallic sandwich plate with a three-dimensional truss core

In this paper, the concept of the continuous fabrication of a metallic sandwich plate with a three-dimensional truss core is introduced. The method consists of three processes as a fabrication system: metallic mesh manufacture, truss core making, and bonding. A process that fabricates rhombic-shaped metal meshes without material loss is introduced. In order to construct the truss core, a crimping process is employed. Bonding is carried out using multipoint resistance welding with a pair of roll electrodes. To realize the proposed process, a prototype apparatus was assembled. Sandwich plates with a pyramidal truss core are fabricated on an integrated system for continuous fabrication, and various experimental verifications are performed in order to investigate the applicability of the proposed process. As a result, it has been shown that the proposed process is an efficient and practical manufacturing process for continuous fabrication of truss-cored sandwich plates.