Dear Ng Hon Pun:
There are a number of US patents in this area. The earliest is probably from
Texas Instruments itself, describing the use of a DLP for stereolithography.
This goes back 7 or 8 years by now, I'd guess. There are also patents from
inventor Efrem Fudim and/or assigned to his company LIght Sculpting, which
describe a form of stereolithography using LCD's and other means of gating
light in parallel. In general, all patents have been written such that they
cover visible, UV and other wavelengths.
You can uncover considerable other work, as well, although I am not familiar
with the Denken or Autostrade patent status. These latter companies probably
don't have US patents, but very likely have Japanese or EPO patents issued or
pending.
You can search all the US material on our web site, and it links to full text
sources from the US PTO and IBM sites.
<A HREF="http://home.att.net/~castleisland/">Worldwide Guide to Rapid
Prototyping Resources</A>
You should also do a literature search before you invest much time on this.
At this stage of the development of RP, there's really a lot to explore
before you begin investing your time and effort.
Have fun!
Ed
Ed Grenda
Castle Island Co.
19 Pondview Road
Arlington, MA 02474 USA
781-646-6280 (voice or fax)
EdGrenda@aol.com (email)
http://home.att.net/~castleisland/
In a message dated 00-07-31 01:09:36 EDT, eng70262@nus.edu.sg writes:
<< I am a final year student from National University of Singapore (NUS). One
of my electives requires my team to come up with a theoretical compact RP
machine. my team had thought of using visible light to cure the resin for
safety reasons. LCD is an attractive option as it also involves lesser
moving parts. But DLP seems to have a better resolution.
1)Does anybody has any further information pertaining to this aspect?
2)Any forseen problems?
2)Any websites in this area?
SLP (by Denken) and E-DARTS (by Autostrade) seems to be the one of the more
compact RP machines in the market.
1)Does anyone knows more about the process involved as their websites
provide very little techical details?
2)So is the SLP or E-DARTS process patented yet? We do not wish to have
clashes with the SLP or E-DARTS process in our conceptual design.
>>
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