RE: Stereolithography Limitations

From: Miller, Michael W (Mike.Miller3@PSS.Boeing.com)
Date: Wed Sep 01 1999 - 18:16:34 EEST


There's only a couple of limitations to stereolithography... speed and strength, oh, and cost, heat resistance, did I mention cost, flexibility, reliability, size, accuracy, brittleness, solvent resistance, and don't forget cost. This mail list frequently explores the future of RP (excursions which I thoroughly enjoy by the way). Stereolithography is just one of the stepping stones to that future and on the way its unlikely any one method will overcome all these "limitations". On the other hand, rapid fabbing has made great in-roads into the tooling and prototype markets where it's unique capability to turn a computer dataset directly into a 3D part is often justified for small quantity situations.

As for my company, material strength and intolerance to heat are probably the most limiting . We have been known to wrap parts in fiberglass and backfill quickcast patterns with epoxy/metal resins to improve these properties.

Michael W Miller (Mike.Miller3@PSS.Boeing.com)
The Boeing Company MS 17-PE B-XT62
Propulsion Experimental Hardware 206-655-3289
Rapid Prototyping 655-4366 Lab 655-4365

> ----------
> From: J.S.Tarrant@rl.ac.uk[SMTP:J.S.Tarrant@rl.ac.uk]
> Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 1999 5:21 AM
> To: rp-ml@ltk.hut.fi
> Subject: Stereolithography Limitations
> Importance: Low
>
> I am looking for information on the limitations of Stereolithography in
> relation to the manufacture of parts. If you are a user or have had
> experience of parts manufactured by Stereolithography, have you any wishes
> for particular improvements that would help your business, product etc.?
> (e.g. improved speed for improved productivity, better accuracy for 'fit'
> prototyping). Alternatively does anybody know of any case studies where
> problems and/or limitations have been encountered using Stereolithography
> (and ideally how they were overcome). Any information gratefully received,
>
> Regards,
>
> Jason Tarrant
>
> For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/
>

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



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