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History for rapid prototyping
Release time:2020-04-01

In the 1970s, Joseph Henry Condon and others at Bell Labs developed the Unix Circuit Design System (UCDS), automating the laborious and error-prone task of manually converting drawings to fabricate circuit boards for the purposes of research and development.

In the year 1980s U.S. policy makers and industrial managers were forced to take note that America's dominance in the field of machine tool manufacturing evaporated, in what was named the machine tool crisis. Numerous projects sought to counter these trends in the traditional CNC CAM area, which had begun in the US. Later when Rapid Prototyping Systems moved out of labs to be commercialized, it was recognized that developments were already international and U.S. rapid prototyping companies would not have the luxury of letting a lead slip away. The National Science Foundation was an umbrella for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the US Department of Energy, the US Department of Commerce NIST, the US Department of Defense, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the Office of Naval Research coordinated studies to inform strategic planners in their deliberations. One such report was the 1997 Rapid Prototyping in Europe and Japan Panel Report[2] in which Joseph J. Beaman[8] founder of DTM Corporation [DTM RapidTool pictured] provides a historical perspective:

The technologies referred to as Solid Freeform Fabrication are what we recognize today as rapid prototyping, 3D printing or additive manufacturing: Swainson (1977), Schwerzel (1984) worked on polymerization of a photosensitive polymer at the intersection of two computer controlled laser beams. Ciraud (1972) considered magnetostatic or electrostatic deposition with electron beam, laser or plasma for sintered surface cladding. These were all proposed but it is unknown if working machines were built. Hideo Kodama of Nagoya Municipal Industrial Research Institute was the first to publish an account of a solid model fabricated using a photopolymer rapid prototyping system (1981).[2] Even at that early date the technology was seen as having a place in manufacturing practice. A low resolution, low strength output had value in design verification, mould making, production jigs and other areas. Outputs have steadily advanced toward higher specification uses.[10]

Innovations are constantly being sought, to improve speed and the ability to cope with mass production applications.[11] A dramatic development which RP shares with related CNC areas is the freeware open-sourcing of high level applications which constitute an entire CAD-CAM toolchain. This has created a community of low res device manufacturers. Hobbyists have even made forays into more demanding laser-effected device designs.[12]

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