Characteristics of Rapid Prototyping

The characteristics of rapid prototyping technology:

1. The materials used for prototyping are unlimited, and all kinds of metal and non-metal materials can be used.

2. The prototype has high reproducibility and interchangeability.

3. Manufacturing technology has nothing to do with the geometric shape of the prototype, so it is more superior in processing complex surface.

4. The processing cycle is short, the cost is low, and the cost has nothing to do with the complexity of the product. The general manufacturing cost is reduced by 50%, and the processing cycle is saved by more than 70%.

1. High technology integration can realize the integration of design and manufacture.

   Rapid Prototyping Manufacturing(RPM) born in the late 1980s, is a high-tech manufacturing technology based on material accumulation method, and it is considered as a major achievement in the manufacturing field in the past 20 years. It integrates mechanical engineering, CAD, reverse engineering technology, layered manufacturing technology, numerical control technology, material science and laser technology. It can automatically, directly, quickly and accurately transform design ideas into prototypes with certain functions or directly manufacture parts, thus providing an efficient and low-cost means for prototype production of parts and verification of new design ideas. Rapid prototyping technology makes use of the data of three-dimensional CAD to accumulate layers of materials into solid prototypes through rapid prototyping machine.

   Basic principles:

   Rapid prototyping (RP) is a computer-controlled technology, which uses different methods to accumulate materials based on the principle of discrete and stacking, and ultimately completes the forming and manufacturing of parts.

2. From the forming point of view, parts can be regarded as the superposition of "points" or "surfaces". Geometric information of "point" or "surface" is discretized from the CAD electronic model, and then it is combined with the information of forming process parameters to control the material accurately and regularly from point to surface to accumulate parts from surface to volume.

3. From the manufacturing point of view, it generates three-dimensional geometric information of parts according to CAD modeling, controls multi-dimensional system, and forms prototype or parts by stacking materials layer by layer through laser beam or other methods.

   Application:

4. The application of rapid prototyping technology in the process of new product modelling design has established a brand-new product development mode for the designers and developers of industrial products. The application of RPM technology can quickly, directly and accurately transform design ideas into physical models (prototypes) with certain functions. This shortens the development cycle, reduces the development costs, and also makes enterprises take the lead in the fierce market competition.

5. The application of RPM technology in the field of mechanical manufacturing has been widely used in the field of mechanical manufacturing due to its own characteristics. It is mostly used in the manufacture of single-piece and small-batch metal parts. Some special and complex parts can be directly moulded by RPM technology with low cost and short cycle, because they only need to be manufactured in single piece or it's a small batch of less than 50 pieces.

6. Rapid tooling has long production time and high cost. Combining rapid prototyping technology with traditional die manufacturing technology can greatly shorten the development cycle of die manufacturing and improve productivity. It is an effective way to solve the weak links of die design and manufacturing. The application of rapid prototyping technology in die manufacturing can be divided into direct and indirect moulding. Direct moulding refers to the use of RPM technology to directly accumulate and manufacture moulds. Indirect moulding is to produce rapid prototyping parts first, and then copy the parts to obtain the required moulds.

7. In recent years, the application of RPM technology in medical field has been widely studied. Based on medical image data, RPM technology is used to make human organ model, which has great application value for surgical operation.

8. In the field of culture and art, rapid prototyping manufacturing technology is mostly used in artistic creation, cultural relics reproduction, digital sculpture and so on.

9. Aerodynamic ground simulation experiments (i.e. wind tunnel experiments) are indispensable for the design of advanced space-to-Earth shuttle systems (i.e. space shuttles) in aerospace applications. The model used in this experiment has complex shape, high precision and streamlined characteristics. It uses RPM technology. According to the CAD model, RPM equipment can automatically complete the entity model, which can ensure the quality of the model.

10. At present, the rapid prototyping system has been widely used in the domestic household appliances industry. It has enabled many household appliances enterprises to take the lead in China. Rapid prototyping technology is widely used. It can be believed that with the continuous maturity and improvement of rapid prototyping manufacturing technology, it will be popularized and applied in more and more fields.

    Development direction:

    From the current research and application status of RPM technology, the further research and development of rapid prototyping technology mainly includes the following aspects:

11. Develop rapid prototyping materials with good properties such as forming materials of  low cost, easy forming, small deformation, high strength, durability and pollution-free.

12. Technological method of improving the processing speed of rpm system and developing parallel manufacturing

13. Improve the reliability of rapid prototyping system, increase its productivity and manufacturing capacity of large parts, optimizing equipment structure, especially improve the accuracy, surface quality, mechanical and physical properties of parts. It provides a basis for further die processing and functional experiments.

14. Develop high performance RPM software for rapid prototyping. In order to improve the speed and accuracy of data processing, the method of direct slicing of CAD raw data is studied and developed to reduce the loss of accuracy caused by STL format conversion and slicing processing.

15. Develop new shaping energy sources.

16. Improvement and innovation of rapid prototyping methods and processes. Direct metal forming technology will become another hit in future research and application.

    7. Carry out a research integrating rapid prototyping technology with CAD, CAE, RT, CAPP, CAM, high precision automatic measurement and reverse engineering.

    8. Improving the research of network service and realizing remote control.