E-manufacturing: distributed Web-based desktop rapid prototyping

Rapid prototyping (RP) is an automated manufacturing process that quickly builds physical models from CAD files of 3D prototypes. With the high 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. The main objective of this paper is to develop Web-based automated RP system, which provides customers the convenience of distance manufacturing without having an expensive RP machine. We take the advantage of the Internet technology to combine product quotation interface, on-line remote monitoring system and order scheduling into a Web-based automated RP system. In the mean time, we developed three kinds of rapid prototyping system. (1)Thermal extrusion based RP system,(2)photo-mask based RP system and (3)metallic RP system, which demonstrated the various fabrication principles and options