ABSTRACT
The term ‘rapid prototyping’ is used to describe the fabrication technology that has advanced primarily since the 1980s for building models, prototypes or components directly from a computer component design. A rastered path, shown in the left-hand drawing, simply rasters across the plane containing the part cross section, turning the laser shutter on and off at the part boundaries to start and stop the deposit. Layer thickness corresponds to the amount the focal zone is moved to start the next layer and is chosen to provide a small amount of re-melting into the top surface of the previous layer to produce complete bonding between layers. For high production volume, the costs for equipment, space, die design and fabrication are offset by the capability of a stamping process to deliver a part or more per second or minute, compared to a direct deposition process to deliver of the order of a few thousand parts per year.
