3D technologies provide agility in manufacturing

This article in Manufacturing Digital covers how the latest in product design, rapid prototyping and rapid manufacturing are changing the world of manufacturing and making the entire process more “agile.”

A sample from the Manufacturing Digital link:

Manufacturing technology plays a big part in this. The current generation of robotics and machine tools are fully programmable, says Keith Ridgway, Research Director at the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC), which makes them quick and easy to reconfigure. But perhaps the most exciting advances are speeding up new product design and introduction.

Rapid prototyping and rapid manufacturing technology, for example, produce prototypes and small volumes of parts quickly straight from CAD, by building up successive layers of material using laser technology. “Virtual reality is also becoming much more widely used,” Ridgway said, “allowing engineers to examine a design and look for clashes, explore how it can be made or assembled, and see what the final product looks like,” thus addressing design and manufacture issues without having to build a physical prototype.