Re: Details required about Envision Perfactory

From: Tom Richards <Thoms1991_at_hotmail.com>
Date: Mon Jan 05 2004 - 19:38:35 EET

Well said, Bill!

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Richards" <billr@virtcon.com>
To: "John Kerr" <johnnkerrr@yahoo.com.sg>
Cc: "Scott Tilton" <stilton@protoprod.com>; <rp-ml@rapid.lpt.fi>
Sent: Sunday, January 04, 2004 5:23 PM
Subject: Re: Details required about Envision Perfactory

Mr. Kerr,

I don't want to get caught up in a flame war, but the others are
correct. Your tone is coming across as accusatory and fairly paranoid.
For example, your comment:

"...Envisiontec or any of its distributor won't tell me the truth &
hidden facts."

That pretty well states clearly that you think you are being lied to.

To answer your comment:

"Take for example below, Mr. Shah is mentioning 12-14 rings in 3.5/4
hours with 0.025 layer &
Steven is mentioning 6-8 rings in 5-6 hours, while only 2 big rings
in 5 hours. I think
Steven is honest enough to tell all the facts."

The statements of both gentlemen are probably true. Anyone with
experience with rapid prototyping systems can tell you that different
geometries and levels of detail are what drive the build time of any
given pattern.
I don't know anything about the Envisiontec system, other than the
information on their web site, but your question is a common one for
any RP system.
Using a Solidscape PatternMaster, I've had builds of a dozen rings
that took only 6 hours to build and I had a build of ONE SINGLE ring
that took almost 40 hours to build. The dozen rings were fairly simple
bands that had a company's name written around the outside. The single
ring was a highly complex ring that carried a theme of flowers as the
stone setting. To carry the detail, it had to be built at .0005" per
Z-layer. With all that detail and so many layers to build, it took a
long time to build that pattern.

The absolute best way to determine build time for your rings on any
one system is to gather a few CAD models that represent your design
style, and then pay to have someone build them for you on the RP system
you want to learn more about.
Then -- when you receive the patterns -- you can look at the quality
of the patterns and consider the build time it took to generate the
patterns of the rings that represent your usual design style. That's
the only way you are going to be able to truly tell how long it will
take to build your style of rings.
And just one job will not be enough. It make take several different
jobs to gather enough data to determine what your average build time
will be. Or for that matter, whether or not using this -- or any -- RP
process will serve your needs.

- Bill Richards
Virtcon Design
Received on Mon Jan 05 19:26:25 2004

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