> Khoshnevis believes Contour Crafting has significant
> advantages over existing rapid-prototyping processes.
> It can create much larger objects more quickly out of a
> greater variety of material - including standard, widely
> used structural plastics or even metals - and the objects
> created require less final finishing.
>
> "Contour Crafting may even have potential not just
> as a rapid- prototyping process, but as a manufacturing
> process," said Khoshnevis, an associate professor in the
> USC School of Engineering's department of industrial and
> systems engineering.
>
Where have I heard this. I remember people thinking that you would have
large manufacturing facilities lined with SLA or SLS or similar and that
this would be your manufacturing.
> All of these layering techniques share a common
> problem - rough edges. <SNIP>
> Khoshnevis' Contour Control system breaks those
> boundaries. It improves on an existing technique in
> which a computer-controlled extrusion nozzle squirts out
> plastic to build up layers, somewhat like the way a cake
> decorator squeezes out patterns.
A Stratasys with Smoothers?
> High-value items like boats are candidates for
> production by the new method, the researcher believes.
> "As we gain expertise in this method," Khoshnevis said,
> "machines improve and cost falls. I believe this method
> will be competitive with some manufacturing processes."
So, how would you ship this? (no pun intended)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jun 05 2001 - 22:39:46 EEST