Re: New Lab at Univ. of Pittsburgh

From: Nick Osborn (Nick@swiftech.co.uk)
Date: Thu Oct 21 1999 - 10:52:43 EEST


Kevin

The best advice I can offer, as a qualified Industrial Design graduate, is to have a system that deals in REAL materials if at all possible. By this I mean the actual enginering polymers that your engineering students will end up specifying once they graduate and have to make material selection decisions, which as I'm sure you are aware can have a very major effect on the success of a product design.

To this end, I would recommend a plastic injection moulding machine (around 50 tonnes is a good size for student project work - go bigger only if you can afford to fully support a bigger system) as the starting point.

Working back upstream from there, as you already have a RP and RE facility, then the only thing you need to make a full suite of tools is a Rapid Tooling Process to slot in between RP and RM. Without getting too hung up on the acronyms involved, this would mean you could go from RE > RP > RT > RM all in house, which I guess is the whole idea, right?

There are a number of different Rapid Tooling methods available, including filled epoxy, spray metal, laminated plates, silicone rubber, etc. which all have their pros & cons. What I would suggest for your needs, however, is a simple, fast and safe system which students can use easily to get results fast.

One such process is the Swiftool Rapid Tooling System that we have developed here at STL to make "Real Parts Real Quick!" In brief, Swiftool is a pourable composite material that sets in 1 hour at room temperature. It is poured against a physical master pattern to form the tool. We supply the full system, from equipment and training through to supply of raw materials and technical support. Prices start from £10,000 ($16,000) for a 4" cube capacity and go up to £250,000 ($400,000) for an 18" cube capacity.

Further details of Swiftool are available on our website for your perusal - if you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me. Note: We do not yet have a distibutor in the USA but we are looking into this at present.

I hope you find the above comments useful & I look forward to hearing from you.

In the meantime, good luck whichever way you decide to go - the students at Pittsburgh should count themselves lucky to have RP + RE + RT + RM all in-house - 7 years ago when I graduated my University had only just got CAD in-house! (Boy, do I feel old sometimes...)

Regards

Nick

Nick Osborn
Managing Director
------------------------------------------------
Swift Technologies Ltd.
140 - 144 Station Road, March,
Cambs. PE15 8NH, UK

"Real Parts Real Quick - Because Time Is Money"

Tel: +44 (0) 1354 650 789
Fax: +44 (0) 1354 650 799
www.swiftech.co.uk
-------------------------------------------

>>> Kevin Creehan <kdcst14+@pitt.edu> 12/10/99 05:13:25 >>>
Hello everyone,

The University of Pittsburgh School of Engineering has recently begun
preparations for a new state-of-the-art Rapid Manufacturing Laboratory to
complement our recently established Rapid Prototyping and Reverse
Engineering Lab.

We are currently in the decision-making process to determine the
technologies that will be included in this lab and would like any feedback,
comments, or suggestions that you may have.

The goal of this lab is to be capable of producing prototype plastic parts,
of batch sizes of about 100. As always when dealing with an academic
institution, cost is an issue, although the funding for this lab is
considerable and we should have the capacity to purchase several
technologies. To date, we have considered vacuum casting, plastic
injection molding, metal spraying technologies, as well as upgrading our
current CNC capacity.

We would like any suggestions and comments that you may have to offer with
respect to any aspect of these technologies, or any part of the industry in
general.

Thank you in advance,

Kevin Creehan
Graduate Research Assistant
Rapid Prototyping & Reverse Engineering Laboratory
University of Pittsburgh

For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/

For more information about the rp-ml, see http://ltk.hut.fi/rp-ml/



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