Re: New applications for RPT

From: Brock Hinzmann (SRI  International)
To: André Dolenc (Helsinki University of Technology)
Date: Monday, March 14, 1994
Forwarded to RP-ML
Subject: Re: New applications for RPT
     Thanks, Andre'. I was just reading about another application that I have suggested in the past, but I hadn't seen anyone actuallyt claim it as an advantage, is data visualization. I don't know if they have actually done it, but IBM is claiming this application can be done on its new US$50 000 desktop machine, due out on the market soon. I the past, I have seen examples of where a Japanese auto manufacturer modeled  a molding process by creating the data on the CAD scree in a series of stages through which the molding process goes. Then they made a stereolithography model with all of the stages shown on one part. I don't know how practical it is for manufacturing, unless they get a lot of detail, but it could at least be a good teaching aid. 
     The other thing I have seen modeled, as I think I mentioned in a note to you last year, was a biotech 
application, where Scientists at Scripps Institute made stereolithography models of molecules and then 
searched for potential binding sites for other molecules. They claimed it was faster than trial and error and the computer screen.
     Another "process" application is to make models of metal castings that have cracked, to try to find the source of the cracking behaviour. SRI has developed an instrument, the FRASTAscope, which recreates failure in materials from stereoscopic photographs of the broken pieces, to determine where the break initiated and what the strong and weak parts of a material might have been. Such a process might look interesting in RP models also. 
brock hinzmann