Abstract
The past few years have delivered a great deal of
development in the area of Layered Manufacturing. The
challenge is to apply the existing technologies to existing
and/or new manufacturing systems, thereby adding value to
these systems.
The advances in the field of Layered Manufacturing range
from the process of slicing to the actual building process.
The main achievements in the arena of slicing have been in
the advances of Adaptive Slicing. By not using a uniform
slice thickness, not only is the stair stepping effect
minimized, but the build time is also shortened. Many
advances have been made in terms of the actual materials
used and the process of building, thereby expanding the
range of uses for the technology as a whole.
With the extension in the variety of materials available
for use with the technology, new uses become more than mere
possibility and actually become viable. The use of Layered
Manufacturing in the case of the CSIR was not the focus of
the original experiment, but was a method to test the
results of their main experiments – namely, research into
the properties of ceramic materials and their use in the
realm of medicine.
The research of the CSIR focuses on the use of ceramic
materials for the purpose of bone implants, which is a
problem area in medicine. The machine they built in order
to test the properties of the new materials they invent,
uses Layered Manufacturing as a building process. What the
CSIR lacks are the backend systems to enable the building of more complex experimental parts, as they have no way of
going from design to a full build.
This research project focuses on proving that the
technologies involved in Layered Manufacturing will add
value to the CSIR’s research. By implementing a system that
takes advantage of existing software, and by using custom
software to make it applicable to the environment the CSIR
is currently operating in, their research could be speeded
up tremendously without putting too much strain on their
budget.
What has been achieved is a simple system which employs the
use of available technologies and software packages, and
which requires no changes to the hardware of the current
process used, such as the Rapid Prototyping machine.
Ehlers, E.M., Prof.