Multiple Build materials

From: Chuck Kirschman (Clemson  University)
To: RP-ML
Date: Sunday, July 24, 1994
Subject: Multiple Build materials
> From: Wolfgang Schloegl <schloegl@faps.uni-erlangen.de>
> Could anyone tell which RP technologies in the future will be able to
> use different materials to build one part.
     The technologies that are most amenible to this are the deposition technologies, such as Sanders, BPM, and Orme's work.  All of these are droplet-deposition technologies, which can use one head or another to throw the drop.  Software will be more difficult, but the hardware is doable.  Stratasys and the new IBM machine also fall into this category, from an extrusion standpoint.
     Imersion type processes, such as SLA, SLS, and Soligen will find it difficult to move this direction.  It 
can be argued that the semi-finished part can have inserts placed on/in it and building continued, but this 
isn't really multiple material build.  Composites are quite possible in  these technologies, though. Cubital 
is kind of hybrid, in that they already build with 2 materials.  They could be adapted for more, as long as 
the base material is photopolymer and all subsequent materials are thermo- cycling or hardenable.  
Epoxies might be a neat application here.
     I guess the far end of this discussion is a "machining center", where we have a CNC mill and the 
capaility to move into an RP center.  Here we could automatically build just about anything, using the 
additive and subtractive processes jointly.
chuck
Speaking only for myself, not for Clemson.