Michel,
Steve,
List,
There may be many products that one could produce using RP machines as the
manufacturing process, you only need to look at the plastic-ware isle of any
department store to find 10,000 different designs of containers for storing
things...these tend to be one or two piece products, and RP can handle them
rather well.
The big problem with personal manufacturing is dealing with assembly and fine
tuning of a product to acheive the desired function. Products that do not
require this activity could and would be the first step in adopting such a
fabrication device at the supplier or even the consumer level.
Question: Would you buy a car made by a process that required you to return to
the manufacturer for all repairs? What if you move away, trade in the car?
There are custom car builders now that hand build to your specs. but it takes
time and costs a lot and replacement parts are a problem.
The existing manufacturing processes would be more likely to incorporate RP as a
production method if the materials and properties of the RP parts were
exploited. We are presently trying to get the RP machines to replicate existing
materials and processes much the way PLASTICS were applied in the 1950-60's.
Instead of designing the products and or parts to be made with RP, we try to get
RP parts to replicate other processes. Once engineers discovered that there were
different design methods and processes that needed to be used when working with
plastics, the plastic market exploded.
The way a manufacturing process is applied is much more important then what it
can do.
Sincerely,
Larry Blasch
System Administrator for Engineering Services
OPW Fueling Components Voice: (513) 870-3356
P.O. Box 405003 Fax: (513) 870-3338
Cincinnati, OH 45240-5003 USA
*********************************************************************
*****************************************************************************
Larry,
Steve,
I think the automobile was not that good an example for explaining what Steve
meant.
But I'd like to stress the fact that industry is heading towards a complete
on-demand production. Producing on demand means that you can shrink your
stocks of finished products, and thus your immobilized capital. Now, if your
customer also wants the product delivered as soon as possible, RP&M is the
solution for decreasing total throughpout times for more and more products made
on smaller and smaller scales.
Regards,
Michel
--
Michel Gilio
Research Engineer
Division PMA - K.U.Leuven
Celestijnenlaan 300 B
B-3001 Heverlee
tel: +32 16 32 27 72 fax: +32 16 32 29 87
e-mail: michel.gilio@mech.kuleuven.ac.be
http://www.mech.kuleuven.ac.be/pma/pma.html
For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jun 05 2001 - 22:47:39 EEST