 |
|
SUNY at Stony Brook College of Engineering & Applied Sciences |
Rapid Prototyping is currently a hot field. It draws the interest of Materials, Mechanical, Manufacturing, Process and Bio engineers. Not only exciting and rewarding to students, she is a guaranteed lever for local industry and commercial enterprises. Imagine the following scenarios. 1) MEC and ESG/ESM students take the disk from the CAD computer and pop it into the RP controller. Next day (NOT next month) their throttle controller is in their hand. "Concept and visualization in 3D" State of the art technology for state of the art students, who tomorrow will be LI's professional engineers.
2) Start-ups, SPIR contractors, and other collaborators have commercial access to prototyping equipment, that they could otherwise not afford. The local entrepreneur gets a physical object from RP for hundreds of dollars, as opposed to thousands and long lead-times. 3) Bioengineers and other medical practitioners can generate STL files (stereolithography) from MRI scans. Then, within a day they can hold a hip joint, skull, or femur model in their hands. 4) Researchers in casting and coating technology get access to equipment, wherein they can expand the horizons and market for RP. The NSF Center for Thermal Spray Research could spray molten metals and ceramics into negative molds (produced by a RP machine) to immediately form positive objects. This and other inter-disciplinary research is boundless. Researchers would have minimal obstacles "in the way of" receiving grants to cover materials and annual costs. 5) The recruitment prospects are equally exciting. Imagine the look on the eyes of a high-school junior when she/he witnesses the three-dimensional creation of a chess set with all the pieces and including the board! You can make a gearbox, and immediately begin to rotate the gears! Certainly, this facility would be another focal point for our educational outreach-programs, such as WISE. 6) RP is interdisciplinary. This is not just for CEAS. Art, Anthropology, and Geosciences are obvious users within CAS. Various departments within Bio, Dental, and SOM would use a RP machine. Any of the machine shops (Physics, Chem, ESS, Bio, or Psych) would love to have access to high quality RP. |
Make things in hours, not days!
|
The Machines: RP is broken up into several markets: Low end (desktop), middle range, high end, and ultra-large volume.
The main differences between the various equipment manufacturers are:
Built Speed:
Material:
Cost:
Build Technology:
Post-processing:
Brief Summary of Competitors
ZCorp uses cornstarch and plaster to build an object
at 1-2 inch/hour at $25/inch of materials.
The final object is chemically infused for
hardness. The entire package cost $60K.
Some additional education discounting is
available. This equipment does not address
all markets, but is extremely cost effective.
Several companies cut and lay-down multiple layers of adhered paper.
Stratsys uses ABS, elastomer, investment
casting wax, or ABSi materials in an extrusion
process which is slightly slower than 1 inch/hour.
Although slower than the ZCorp, the finished
product is of higher quality and more versatile.
With educational discounts they sell machines
from 100K to 350K. The high-end machines are
substantially quicker. Additionally, unlike
the next competitor they do not have "expensive
to replace" lasers. SUNY Farmingdale has one.
DTM uses laser sintering of powders which
offers them a rich array of materials.
Current materials include:
The SLAs from 3d-Systems are the standard
bearer in industry. However, they rely
on photo-chemical liquids which create issues
of limited range of materials, support structures, i
toxicity, and post processing.
Customized machines is each of these
areas allow for enormous build-volumes,
with machines costing in the millions
of dollars.
Our Choices
The College has purchased and installed a
FDM Stratasys 3000 and a DTM Sinterstation2500Plus.
The 3000 uses a water soluble support structure.
The 2500Plus uses a self-supporting powder.
|
|
Relevant Comments:
"Great idea, looks a lot better than just using AutoCad."
"Looks good, when are we getting it?"
"My god! How do they do that?"
"It is not cheap, but it is worth it."
"How come you finally getting one, just when I'm graduating?"
"Cool! I want one."
Prof. George Hart
The RP facilities of the engineering school have furthered my research, as
they enable me to develop and test new algorithms for 3D design. They
also have made possible a senior seminar project course about procedural
generation of 3D objects, which I introduced in the computer science
department this year. Student projects from the first time teaching the
course are online here:
Prof. Clinton Rubin
"There are clear uses for a RP machine in the clinical
setting, such as creating surgical strategies for severe
skeletal trauma, as well as the resource RP would provide
to optimize design elements in bioengineering curriculum/research"
Prof. Gary Halada
"The addition of a state-of-the-art rapid prototyper to the college educational
resources will guarantee that we can fulfill our objectives of providing
a relevant and thorough design experience for every student. The ability
to rapidly prototype will enhance the undergraduate design experience
in all courses and provide visual and hands-on project enhancement for all
stages of the design process, including concept selection, modeling, Design for
Manufacturing (DFM), Design for Environment (DFE), product architecture,
optimization, design refinement and quality assurance. No other single
addition to our laboratories could provide such wide-spread benefits for our
degree programs."
Prof. Chris Berndt
"Modern engineers and scientists need to integrate design with manufacturing and
performance. The usual classical process of "handing a drawing to the tool
shop", then waiting several months for a component to be produced which is then
tested so that modifications can be made -- and then repeating this loop of
"drawing - machining - testing - redesign" is the old paradigm which does not
work in this more competitive world.
Therefore, engineers need components from the drawing board (or, more correctly,
from the AutoCad software computer) into their test rigs and factories quickly
and this is what the rapid prototyping device can do. The beauty of such
equipment is that they are affordable for engineering departments and enable a
realistic engineering training for our undergraduates that will be recognized by
the employers of our students. Moreover, it is clear that such a commitment from
USB will be in accordance with the requirements of the new ABET (i.e., EC-2000)
so that we can claim that we are integrating design, manufacturing and team work
within our curriculum. I can envisage that a USB resource in the area of rapid
prototyping will be facilitate a transition into modern engineering practice."
Imin Kai, Prof., Mechanical Engineering
Free Form Manufacturing is a new and exciting field. The students in
the College will benefit from the hands-on experience of this new
manufacturing process.
Clive Clayton, Director, SPIR
"The rapid proto-typing equipment will be of enormous benefit to the Strategic
Partnership for Industrial Resurgence (SPIR) activity which is based at USB. The
SPIR program incorporates the resources of four State University of New York
(SUNY) engineering programs (Binghamton, Buffalo, New Paltz and Stony Brook) and
has a prime mission to revitalize and redirect New York State industry by moving
it toward an economy based on technical knowledge and the development of new
technologies.
In today's rapidly changing business environment it's essential that businesses
stay on top of advances in technology. Keeping up with these developments,
though, can be difficult and costly. That's where the rapid proto-typing
equipment will have the opportunity to play a major role in helping out NYS
industry. I can envisage companies - both large and small - being attracted to
the SPIR program because of the rapid proto-typing resource. The companies will
be able team up with professors to quickly and efficiently prototype their
products and bring them to market in a timely fashion. Since the SPIR program
incorporates graduate and undergraduate students I can see focussed internships
developing that will marry university and industry resources.
SPIR's goal is to make NYS businesses more competitive and I, therefore,
strongly endorse the acquisition of the rapid proto-typing equipment since it
will help us achieve this mandated goal."
|
|
Teaching: ESG 100 Introduction to Engineering Science MEC 203 Techanical Drawing and Computer-Aided Drafting I & II ESG 217 Engineering Science Design I MEC 310 Introduction to Machine Design ESG 316 Engineering Science Design II MEC 325/580 Manufacturing Processes ESM 353 Biomaterials ESM 355 Materials Processing and Manufacturing MEC 412 Computer-Aided Design ESM 440 Senior Design I ESM 441 Senior Design II MEC 440 Mechanical Engineering Design I MEC 441 Mechanical Engineering Design II ESM 450 Phase Changes and Mechanical Properties of Materials MEC 583 Computer-Integrated Manufacturing |
|
Research: 1. NSF: "Kinematics driven geometric modeling for virtual design and prototyping" Q. J. Ge and A. Varshney. The RP machine will be used to make prototypes for design verification and demonstration. 2. NSF: "Full-field 3-D surface contouring for industrial inspection and reverse engineering" P. S. Huang and F. P. Chiang. The RP machine will be used as part of a 3-D copy machine for reverse engineering applications. 3. Material property testing and stress analysis of rapid prototyped parts. 4. NSF/DARPA: (to be submitted) Thermal-spray and rapid-protyping production of spray mandrels for casting and rapid tooling. H. Herman and R. Zatorski 5. NSF: Materials Research Science and Engineering Center H. Herman, S. Sampath, C. Berndt, and A. King
Who else uses RP?
RP is a maturing technology, and Stony Brook should
not miss the bandwagon. Below is a list of several
of the companies in the US which use RP. Additionally,
there are dozens of top academic institutions involved
in RP and associate research. Finally, approximately
half of the RP research is in the Pacific Rim and Europe.
In the US, here are some of the users:
|
|
The Bottom Line The era of RP is upon us. The combination of usage by multiple departments in their academic, research, and industrial programs makes RP impossible to pass up.
For more information, contact:
Rapid Prototyping Facility |
| 12/10/2004 JQ |