Oliver,
In response to a request from Elaine Hunt for product ideas (If I Had a
Machine...) from some years ago, I wrote a poem that was eventually made
part of a paper on the Personal Factory (I think a copy still resides on
Marshall Burns's Web site at Ennex). That same paper, however, is full of all
sorts of caveats. While each of us can probably think of a few things we
would like to fabricate for ourselves, it would really make more sense for
someone else to make them for us, using input from us. It's up to you to
find those >>fringe<< customers willing to deal with the current
limitations of the technology.
Brock Hinzmann
Technology Navigator
SRI International
RP Solutions wrote:
>Dear Fabbers,
>
>I was very excited to see all your opinions re-RP being "the
manufacturing
>process of the future", as an independant RP bureau we are however
>compelled by the financial realities of life to look at the situation as
we
>have it now, today.
>
>I was really interested to see Roger Spielman's contribution and I like
the
>idea of looking for those "can-do parts". Perhaps Roger could elaborate
a
>bit on the types of parts, materials and quantities that he is
producing?
>
>Trying to produce small batches of high value parts on RP systems does
look
>like an interesting possibility. What other industry sectors have
>applications that could prove viable?Do we (RP bureaux) need more
feedback
>from end users to identify potential niches?
>
>Which RP process is most suited to this? how important are material
>properties, cycle times part costs etc? (We have Stratasys FDM
technology
>that produces ABS plastic parts)
>
>Are their any UK RP-MLers reading this that would like to investigate
>potential applications? If so why not get in touch. Iam sure that this
is a
>side of RP that we should look at carefully.
>
>Yours,
>Oliver Cole
>Technical Director
>
>RP Solutions Ltd
>
>Tel: 01203 632 120
>Fax: 01203 632 131
>Email: rps@dircon.co.uk
>
For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/
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