Enhanced rapid prototyping for faster product development processes

摘要

Rapid Prototyping (RP) is useful in the fast production of physical prototypes and therefore constitutes a key element in the optimization and abbreviation of product development processes. To increase the accuracy and decrease the fabricationtime of prototypes, an RP-Toolkit was developed supporting the overall CAPP process. The RP-Toolkit provides functional modules for repair of surfaces, technological planning of various RP processes as well as mechanisms for realization of STEP-basedprocess chains. An essential aspect is the user-driven definition and adaptation of technological parameters to meet prototype requirements. Improvements in prototype quality are gained by use of process-specific production strategies. The build time ofprototypes can be reduced using functions for adaptive slicing of precise BREP models.