In recent years, rapid tooling (RT) has become increasingly important because of the requirement of rapid manufacturing. RT can be used to produce temporary molds as well as permanent molds in mass production. RT provides more benefits from the design stage to mass production. The objective of this research is to develop the direct metallic RT system and identify process parameters of laser cladding. A 2.5-kW Nd-AG laser system, a metallic powder feeder system, a lateral powder nozzle system, a PC-based motion controller, and a shielding gas-supply system are incorporated for the hardware architecture in the proposed RT system. The critical process parameters influencing the dimensional accuracy were analyzed with Taguchi's experimental design. From the analysis of variance computational results, the factors "Scanning speed" and "Tool path offset" are the influential factors affecting the layer thickness of RT parts. From the experimental results, the dimensional accuracy of the dual nozzle RT system is better than the single-nozzle RT system. Finally, the proposed RT system could fabricate the mold inserts. After finishing the mold inserts and assembling the plenary injection mold, the injection molding machine can generate acrylonitrile butadiene styrene plastic parts with excellent quality. Note to Practitioners-Rapid prototyping (RP) technologies have provided a new way of making models or producing visualization prototype in a fast fashion. However, there is an urgent demand from the industry for much faster ways to make physical prototypes, with the desired material using the appropriate production method. RP technologies have introduced a new generation of RT processes. Producing tooling directly from computer-aided-design (CAD) models is regarded as an important process of reducing the cost and time to market for new products. In this paper, a direct metallic rapid tooling (RT) system is developed to fabricate the metallic parts and molds directly from 3-D CAD models. The experimental investigations are implemented to study the proposed RT system. Using Taguchi's method, the critical performance process parameters have been analyzed. The analysis of variance method is used to decide the important process parameters. The developed RT system can produce the mold inserts directly. After assembling the plenary injection mold, the Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene ABS plastic parts have been generated from this RT mold to demonstrate the success of the process. In the future, it is possible to develop a grading alloy RT system, which can control the ratio of the alloy grading layers. Because the grading alloy rapid mold can use varied metallic powders with varied ratio, the cooling time and the residual stress can be reduced. Furthermore, the RT system can also adopt the coaxial nozzle which can be integrated with the optical system. The advantage of the coaxial nozzle is the independence of the powder supply direction in which the workpiece moves

In recent years, Rapid Tooling (RT) has become more important because of the requirement of rapid manufacturing. RT can be used to produce temporary mold, even permanent mold in mass production. RT makes more benefit from design stage to mass production. The objective of this research is to develop the Direct Metallic Rapid Tooling System and identify process parameters of laser cladding. A metallic powder feeder system, a three-axis motion control system, a 500W Nd-YAG laser system, a shielding gas supply system, and a powder nozzle are incorporated for the hardware architecture in Direct Metallic Rapid Tooling System. Besides, the designed software that includes slicing algorithm with bucket sorting, contour generation and tool path generation algorithm are presented briefly. Effort was attempted to find out the better process parameters of laser cladding using single clad and cladding layer techniques. Based on the investigation, some metallic RT parts were fabricated and discussed.

Rapid tooling (RT) refers to the rapid creation of molds in much the same way as rapid prototyping, which means the rapid creation of models. Rapid prototyping is a method that offers both designers and manufacturers some advantages such as time compression and cost reduction. Rapid tooling has become more important because of the requirement of rapid manufacturing. Rapid tooling can be used to produce temporary mold, even permanent mold in mass production. Rapid tooling makes more benefit from design stage to mass production. The objective of This work is to develop a metallic rapid prototyping system and form a complete set of important parameters of laser cladding. The software technique includes slicing algorithm with bucket sorting and tool path generation algorithm. The hardware architecture includes 500 W Nd-YAG laser, metallic powder feeder, coaxial nozzle, shielding gas (Ar) supply system, CNC milling system and linear planar motor based working table. The system controller is a PC-based control system, which includes 3-axis AC servo motor driver and I/O control card. The system control software is written by Visual Basic language. The prototype system has been constructed and demonstrated.

A rapid prototyping (RP) machine system which combines a PC-based controller with the thermal-extrusion method is presented. The proposed RP system offers a three-axis platform, an extrusion head, a temperature controller, and a PC-based control system. Low-cost acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) pellets/powder are used for thermal extrusion, although the system is easily adapted to other not-too-dissimilar materials. In order to improve the quality of RP part, the Taguchi method was used to analyzing the process parameters of the proposed RP system. Based on the experimental results, the proposed RP mechatronics system can produce good quality RP parts. The RP software technique includes slicing, support, tool path, and motion code generation. This paper also presents a new adaptive slicing algorithm for RP system. According to this algorithm, the three-dimensional (3-D) computer-aided design (CAD) model can be sliced with different thickness automatically by comparing the contour circumference or the center of gravity of the contour with those of the adjacent layer. With this adaptive slicing method, the part can be fabricated faster than it uses uniform slicing method with identical accuracy. Finally, the intelligent web-based RP system allows remote users to upload an STL file, to directly building up of the physical model, and to monitor the actual fabrication process from a charged coupled devices (CCD) camera located in the RP machine itself. The user does not need to buy an expensive RP machine; instead, he can rent time and uses the machine remotely via the Internet.Note to Practitioners-RP has being used as an essential augmented tool between CAD and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) for product manufacturing. RP uses layered manufacturing technology to produce complicated prototypes directly from a CAD model. As imaging, materials, and processing techniques improve, RP functions such as assembly fit, tooling masters, prototype tools, and prototype parts are made possible. RP technology that can construct parts of multiple materials, colors, and even parts composed of composite materials will soon be available. In this paper, an RP machine system which combines PC-based controller with thermal extrusion method is presented. Low-cost ABS pellets are used for thermal extrusion, although the system is easily adapted to other not-too-dissimilar materials. Based on the experimental results, the proposed RP mechatronics system can produce good quality RP parts. In this paper, a new adaptive slicing algorithm is developed to decrease fabrication time without much reducing the model accuracy. According to this algorithm, the 3-D CAD model can be sliced with different thickness automatically. With this adaptive slicing method, the part can be fabricated much faster than it uses traditional uniform slicing method. Finally, the intelligent web-based RP system has been developed which allows remote users to upload a CAD file of the part, direct building up of the physical model, and monitoring of the actual fabrication process from a CCD camera located in the RP machine itself. The greatest advantage is that user does not need to buy an expensive RP machine; instead he rents time and uses the machine remotely via the Internet. This really drastically reduces the production development cycle for the highly competitive time-to-market challenge.

Rapid prototyping is an automated manufacturing process that quickly builds physical models from CAD files of 3D prototypes. It dramatically speeds up design and manufacturing processes and substantially reduces the cost. With the highly advanced network technologies, many different software and hardware systems can be integrated as a distributed platform to provide more services, solve more complicated problems, and achieve better performance. We build a distributed Web platform on Internet using CORBA to effectively utilize various RP resources running on Linux, Solaris, or Microsoft Windows platforms. Users can design, simulate, and manufacture prototypes through a browser interface. Another objective of this paper is to develop a thermal extrusion based RP system which is equipped with a linear 2D planar motor. In order to improve the quality of RP part, Taguchi method was used to analyzing the process parameters of the proposed RP system. Based on the experimental results, the proposed RP mechatronics system can produce good quality RP parts. Based on the experimental results, the proposed RP system can produce good quality RP parts.