Re: [Fwd: Prototyping bottles]

From: Delft Spline Systems (info@spline.nl)
Date: Mon Aug 30 1999 - 10:33:32 EEST


Pedro Garayo wrote:
>Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 12:05:10 +0200
>To: Rapid Prototyping Mailing List <rp-ml@ltk.hut.fi>
>Subject: Prototyping bottles
>
>Hello list,
>
>I've come up to a not very usual type of product for my everyday job. I
>need to make prototypes for marketing purposes of bottles and caps in
>several sizes for food storage. Diameters range from 100 to 55 mm. and
>heights from 250 to 150 mm. (of the mounted product). Which would you
>think to be the best rp method? I was thinking SLS, if I want to paint
>finish the product... Are there any special considerations I should be
>aware of?
>
>Thanks. Regards,
>
>+--------------------------+------------------+
>| Pedro Garayo | CIDAUT |
>| R&D Project Engineer | P.Tec. Boecillo |
>| Tel 34-983-548035 | 47151 Valladolid |
>| +------------+-------------+ |
>| SPAIN | mailto:pedgar@cidaut.es | ;) |
>+-------------+--------------------------+----+

Dear Pedro,

Instead of only considering Layered Manufacturing Technologies (LMT),
you should consider CNC milling as well. Especially for this job
(marketing models of bottles) CNC milling is a perfectly suited technology.

Please allow me to explain (sorry list, for the commercial bias in the
following: if irrelevant do ignore).

The models you need are in fact styling block models, for which
most important are the visual appearance, the finishing (including
graphics text and texture), the weight and the firmness (to be touched
by many people). To meet all those requirements tooling boards have
been developed specificly for prototype building, offering superior
properties (on the above requirements anyway) to any LMT material.
A (solid) CNC milled model in tooling board can easily be finished to
the correct color, gloss, etc. It will have the correct weight for your
application, and can be given to anybody (even to the corporate
managament ;-) without fear of damage.

Obviously a trick has to be used to manufacture a complete bottle
model on a three axis milling machine (Such machine cannot reach
the geometry from all sides). For bottles this is very easy: almost
any bottle has a flat plane of symmetry dividing it into two halves,
each of which is easily manufacturable. So do machine two
separate halves in tooling board, stick them together and finish the
result. We have made many great bottle models following this easy
procedure.

Just as for any LMT process you can find many service providers
capable of producing the bottles models by CNC milling, at a lower
price than any LMT based offer. The interesting extra possibility
for CNC milling is that in-house operation is affordable: a project
like this could be sufficient to justify the investment.

Base line of this contribution:
Always consider CNC milling as one of the available RP technologies.

Best regards,

Lex Lennings.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Delft Spline Systems, The Netherlands.
We offer DeskProto: affordable Rapid Prototyping using CNC milling.

mailto:info@spline.nl --- website: http://www.deskproto.com

For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/



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