The development of distributed Web-based rapid prototyping manufacturing system

Rapid prototyping is an automated manufacturing process that quickly builds physical models from CAD files of 3D prototypes. It 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 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. In order to improve the quality of RP part, Taguchi method was used to analyzing the process parameters of the proposed RP system. Based on the experimental results, the proposed RP mechatronics system can produce good quality RP parts. Based on the experimental results, the proposed RP system can produce good quality RP parts.