Re: Am I In the Right Place?

From: Brock Hinzmann (SRI International)
Date: Thursday, August 4, 1994

From: Brock Hinzmann (SRI  International)
To: Mike Costa (Zycad  Corporation), RP-ML, Suby Gupta (Zycad  Corporation)
Date: Thursday, August 4, 1994
Subject: Re: Am I In the Right Place?
To Mike, Suby, and others,

You are correct in realizing that the term Rapid Prototyping is in use in
several industries. This rp-ml is for people interested in the direct
conversion of CAD models into physical models, patterns for molding or
casting, and, in the future, production parts that may be purely mechanical
or may incorporate circuit boards or other function parts. I know of at least
three other areas where rp is the term of choice:

o printed circuits boards. Similarly, companies make prototype PCBs on
machines built and offered for sale for that purpose. I know of a few
companies that have tried, but I don't think the business is growing rapidly,
since many people seem to prefer to make prototypes that more closely match
production materials.

o ASICs, which seems to be your interest. Some companies used to specialize
in the area, such as Accurel, Lasa Industries, Qudos Ltd., and Rapro
Technology, others offered it as a sideline, such as VLSI Technology, Harris
Semiconductor, Tektronix, Ford Microelectronics, and GEC Plessey, and the big
fabs started doing it in house and offering services to outsiders as well.
Products and services ranged from software to simulate virtual prototypes to
entire minifab facilities. If you have contacts at any of the big ASICs
houses, they can probably help you find where to go on the Internet to catch
the wave.

o and Computer-Aided Software Engineering (CASE), where RP is also the common
term.

I do not know of any mailing lists for any of these three other areas, but I
am not the person responsible for monitoring those areas. If I happen to hear
of anything from my staff, I'll post it. 

Brock Hinzmann
Director, TechMonitoring
SRI International


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