Solid Freeform Fabrication (SFF) refers to a class of rapid manufacturing process that builds parts by incremental material deposition and fusion of thin 2-1/2 dimensional layers. Over this past decade, SFF has taken the manufacturing industry to new heights. However, parts produced by SFF processes exhibit a stair-step surface texture due to the presence of 2-1/2 dimensional layers and exhibit...

ZHIQI SHEN*, HUI MIEN LEE, CHUNYAN MIAO, MEENA SAKHARKAR, ROBERT GAY AND TIN WEE TAN School of EEE, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798; School of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798; School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798 and Department of Biochemistry, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicin...

The Selective Laser Sintering Process of thermoplastics (SLS) enables the manufacturing of components with complex shape in a short time period without the manufacturing of a specific mold. However, this manufacturing process is limited by the restricted range of materials. In contrast to this primary shaping process, vacuum casting allows a quick, inexpensive and highly accurate process but it...

The research area “Virtual Manufacturing” can be defined as an integrated manufacturing environment which can enhance one or several levels of decision and control in manufacturing process. Several domains can be addressed: Product and Process Design, Process and Production Planning, Machine Tool, Robot and Manufacturing System. As automation technologies such as CAD/CAM have substantially shor...

In a manufacturing feature-based process planning system, for the generation of process plans, it is necessary to develop a feature library that consists of pre-defined manufacturing features and the manufacturing information to create the shape of the features. This paper describes the development of a feature library for a process planning system. The feature library is developed to enable th...

In the UK, and in many other parts of the world, reinforcing steels are specified to British Standards, or very similar, which in the main do not specify process routes. As a result, many specifiers, purchasers and users are unaware of the different process routes used in their manufacture. Manufacturing process routes for some of the reinforcing steel products used have changed considerably in...

There is a time for all things: a time for shouting, a time for gentle speaking, a time for silence, a time for washing pots and a time for writing journal papers and books. It is hard to make a BEGINNING, and will become harder, but IT MUST BE DONE. So be vigilant and vigorous for that will cover a " multitude of sins ". And do not frown. And remember: " Work banishes those three great evils: ...

Manufacturing processes are input/output systems subject to disturbances and uncertainties. Hence, process control is a necessary compensation. However, control tools cannot be chosen arbitrarily, but are limited by several process characteristics. Primary among these, process resolution determines the degree to which changes in process inputs produce changes in process states and in process ou...