Rapid Prototyping You have created 3D drawings of your designs. Professional Designers now would...

Rapid Prototyping

You have created 3D drawings of your designs.

Professional Designers now would take these files and use them to create actual models for their client to look at and to handle.

The traditional way of making up a prototype (a prototype is the first in a series of products) means that you need a skilled person, a variety of tools and a workshop.

The designer would have to hand over detailed drawings to the craftsperson, who would make up the prototype in wood or clay or modelling foam, depending on the product.

Usually this would be a slow process, and it would be quite expensive.

You have used CAD (Computer Aided Design) to visualise your ideas. Compared to doing the work by hand you were able to easily change your designs and apply rendering to them, this meant you were a lot faster.

To speed up protoyping several ways of CAM (Computer Aided Manufacturing) were developed.

Rapid Prototyping

Stereolithography has many common names such as: 3D printing, optical fabrication, photo-solidification, solid free-form fabrication, and solid imaging.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereolithography

Stereo

Lithography

Apparatushttp://computer.howstuffworks.com/stereolith.htm

Rapid Prototyping : Stereolithography

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/enlarge-image.htm?terms=stereolithography+-robots&gallery=1&page=1


Pictures taken at Metropolitan Works, 07/07

One of the appealing aspects about using SLA is that a functional part can be created within one day which becomes useful when working in a “time is money” environment. However the amount of time to produce any one part depends on the size and complexity of it and can take any where from a few hours to more than a day.

Stereolithography is an additive fabrication process utilizing a vat of liquid UV-curable photopolymer resin and a UV laser to build parts a layer at a time. On each layer, the laser beam traces a part cross-section pattern on the surface of the liquid resin. Exposure to the UV laser light cures, or, solidifies the pattern traced on the resin and adheres it to the layer below.



http://www.protocam.com/html/video.html



Most SLA machines can produce parts with a maximum size of 20” x 20” x 24”. Prototypes made by SLA can be very beneficial, they are strong enough to be machined and can be used as master patterns for injection molding, thermoforming, blow molding, and also in various metal casting processes.





http://www.metropolitanworks.org

http://www.metropolitanworks.org/

http://www.metropolitanworks.org/

Rapid Prototyping You have created 3D drawings of your designs. Professional Designers now would...

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