Advanced rapid prototyping manufacturing system for E-automation

Rapid prototyping technique 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 and some real-time technologies 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. The RP software technique includes slicing, tool path and motion code generation. This paper also presents a new adaptive slicing algorithm, the 3D 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. By the experimental results, the proposed RP system can produce good quality RP parts.