Nomenclature Assignment Disputation (NAD)

From: R. Campbell (University of Nottingham)
To: RP-ML
Date: Monday, January 9, 1995
Subject: Nomenclature Assignment Disputation (NAD)
     I have been reading the messages regarding giving a meaningful name 
to RP technologies with great interest, some amusement and a 
little incredulity. At first I thought "isn't this a waste of time? 
and "I'm not going to get involved in this!". However, having seen 
varoius contributions I just couldn't resist making my own, sorry.
     I believe we are dealing with a new group of manufacturing processes. 
Looking at manufacturing text books will tell you that conventional 
processes are often categorised into casting, forming, material-removal
and joining.  In trying to arrive at a generic name for 
stereolithography, SLS, FDM, LOM and the rest, 
surely we should be aiming for something that will identify their
relationships to and/or differences from the above process categories.
     Therefore,  we would need something that conveys the additive rather 
than subtractive nature of the processes, the avoidance of tooling 
requirements and perhaps the inherent integration between design and 
manufacture. If anyone can come up with a catch-all phrase that we 
all are happy with then great.
     Alternatively, we may be prepared to live with a commonly recognised 
misnomer (rapid prototyping) that refers to material-addition 
processes in the same way that "machining" is often used to denote 
material-removal processes.
     I think I would be happy either way but is it a little bit arrogant 
of us as the RP "experts" to try to impose our consensus (if there is 
one) on the wider user community? Shouldn't we just get on with 
developing the technology and encouraging people to use it.
     Happy New Year to you all and I hope you are already thinking about 
what papers you are going to submit to the Rapid Prototyping Journal.
Regards
Ian Campbell