I promised provide more information on Vern Schmidt's report, so here it is.
The information is focused on Chrysler's speedometer adapter benchmark part,
which measures roughly 50 x 50 x 80 mm. The material cost for this part was
about 2.6 percent of the total cost of producing the part. I calculated this
average from the numbers published in one of Vern's tables. The table, dated
19 Nov 93, included material cost figures for building the part on two
SLA-250s, an SLA-500, Solider 5600, Sinterstation 2000, 3D Modeler (FDM), and
LOM-1015. The percentage range was 1.3 to 4.1.
When doing the work, Vern considered many factors including the cost of the RP
equipment, depreciation cost, maintenance costs, preprocessing, machine build
time, postprocessing, labor, and material. Vern's most recent benchmark
comparison is dated 19 Apr 94 and was made available at RPA/SME's Rapid
Prototyping & Manufacturing '94 conference. I didn't calculate the average
material cost from this updated information, but I would expect it to be
similar.
Hope this is of interest to you.
Terry
Wohlers Associates, Inc.
OakRidge Business Park
1511 River Oak Drive
Fort Collins, CO 80525 USA
(970) 225-0086
Fax (970) 225-2027
twohlers@cis.compuserve.com
http://lamar.colostate.edu/~wohlers
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