Rapid Prototyping Technology – Know The Basics
Rapid prototyping technology (RP) also known as solid freeform fabrication has been used for quite a long time all over the world. The equipment for rapid prototyping is a very accurate and high-precision one, capable of creating the most painstaking and detailed project. The price of these rapid prototyping machines can vary. There are relatively cheap items that cost up to 15000 dollars, items of the middle range with the price going up to 90000 dollars and extremely expensive machines costing up to 500 000 dollars. However, the price is fully justified, because the price for rapid prototyping model is also quite high.
One of the rapid prototyping machines called Fabber was designed by Dr.Hod Lipson working for the Computational Synthesis Laboratory at Cornell. At the very beginning, Fabber was intentioned to become a machine reproducing missed or lost Lego pieces. The price of the machine appeared to be comparatively reasonable. The build volume of the machine was 512 cubic inches.
Fabber was planned to become a new approach to a machine for 20 years being a so-called niche product. Inventors of Fabber say that it is quite similar to the Altair 8000 that is the forefather of all modern microcomputers. This machine also was the initiator of the computer boom, which was taking place in 70’s years of the 20th century. Even the price of machines is similar – the Fabber’s cost is 2300 dollar, whereas Altair 8000 would cost about 2000 dollars nowadays.
‘What is this Fabber all about’ you may ask. Fabber is a solid free form fabrication tool or, in other words, a rapid prototyping tool. The main parts of the Fabber are lifting table, XY axis stepper motor and the printing head, consisting of syringes. Syringes are filled with different prototyping fluid materials of different solidity. Depending of the nozzle size, different syringes and fluids are used for production of the smalles parts of the future prototype.
The company releasing this amazing rapid prototyping tool is called Koba Industries. It works jointly with the company named Feb@Home. The greatest thing about the tool is that it is made of the materials at hand and can be bought any time for just 2000 dollars, which is quite a low price for a tool that can be used the day it was bought – so handy and comfortable in use it is.
This machine may create anything you wish. Inventors of the model have already produced a very useful flashlight with injected circuitry, amazing electronic watches. The Fabber maintains STL format, which is the format of almost all 3D graphical applications and creates the prototype on the basis of the computerized scheme.
Of, course, the Fabber is just a concept tool, project, which can be one day, become a widely used machine, but its functionality is just great for its price.
Over the recent decades rapid prototype services coped up with solving lots of tech problems. And rapid prototype might help you to. Please read more about the rapid prototype technology and how it helps.
Today we live in the world where info quickly enhances the quality of our life.
That is why if you are properly armed with the info in your sphere of interest you can be sure that you will always find the solution to any bad situation. So, please make sure to track this web site on a regular basis or – the least time consuming way of doing it – sign up to its RSS. Thus you will have a direct shortcut to the freshest informational updates here. Blogging can be helpful, you just need to understand how to use them.
