New trends in rapid prototyping and rapid manufacturing applications in metal casting

摘要

It can be stated that presently the layered manufacturing concept as an instrument of 3D-visualisation (plain rapid prototyping) has been completely realised. For a modern engineer RP-device is nothing more than an office printer. The only difference is that it creates 3D tangible models instead of flat projections on printouts, but it takes significantly more time. Most of the current developments in RP technology are aimed at increasing the build speed and decreasing the cost of materials and equipment. The application of rapid tooling in industry is growing up. We should expect the appearance of a number of new RT solutions for the metal casting industry in the nearest future. Although it is real to produce a number of different functional parts without employment of any specific tooling on one universal RP machine, the idea of mass production by the tool less way is still from the field of science fiction. Because of the relatively low build speed and high cost of the technology, RM can find its application only as an experimental parts generator or in cases when traditional manufacturing methods do not meet the customer's requirements.