Rapid Manufacturing

Rapid Manufacturing is a term that embraces rapid prototyping and rapid tooling. Rapid prototyping is an exciting new technology for quickly creating physical models and functional prototypes directly from CAD models. Rapid tooling generally concerns the production of tooling using parts manufactured by rapid prototyping. Rapid prototyping and rapid tooling are means for compressing the time-to-market of products and, as such are competitiveness enhancing technologies. The book describes the characteristics and capabilities of the main known rapid prototyping processes. It covers in detail commercially available processes, such as: - Stereolithography (SLA); - Selective Laser Sintering (SLS); - Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM); - Solid Ground Curing (SGC); - Laminated Object Manufacturing (LOM) and provides information on several other processes still under development. The book discusses various direct and indirect methods of producing soft tooling, firm tooling (or bridge tooling) and hard tooling based on rapid prototyping. The discussion is wide- ranging and not found in other books published to-date. Also special to the book is material on process optimisation. This was derive