| Budget Amount *help |
¥4,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥4,000,000)
Fiscal Year 1999: ¥1,900,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,900,000)
Fiscal Year 1998: ¥2,100,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,100,000)
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| Research Abstract |
Technologies to fabricate solid objects of various shapes automatically and rapidly from 3-D CAD geometry data are called "rapid prototyping". The purpose of this study is to propose a fundamental technology of rapid prototyping using multiple materials of different properties such as elasticity and electric conductivity so that the resulting solid objects have some functions as well as geometry. The results of this study are summarized as follows :
1. By comparing solid freeform fabrication methods, fused deposition modeling (FDM) was adopted because of its capability of utilizing wide range of materials. After some theoretical calculation and basic experiments, a rapid prototyping system based on FDM using extrusion by screws and cylinders was designed and made. The system has multiple sets of screw and cylinder, each of which contains different materials. The system selects the screw-cylinder during fabrication process so that it can fabricate a solid object consisting of multiple ma
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terials.
2. Conventional data formats for rapid prototyping such as STL (STereo-Lithography) are not originally designed to handle multiple materials. This study proposed a new data processing method for multiple material, fabrication by extending' the interpretation of existing STL and VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) format so that the compatibility between current data formats is maintained.
3. When fabricating an object consisting of multiple materials, bonding between two materials at the boundary is not strong enough in some material combination. To strengthen the bonding, path overlapping method for neighboring, two materials in the same layer and path interlace method for two layers of different materials were proposed.
4. The methods mentioned above were implemented as a rapid prototyping system. By fabricating objects consisting of multiple materials such as polypropylene, elastomer and conductive resin, efficacy, possibility and current limitation of this study were examined. Less
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