• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.24 no.8 s.179
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• pp.1958-1967
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• 2000

Rapid Prototyping( RP ) has been increasingly applied in the process of design and development of new products. RP can shrink the time and expense required to bring a new product from initial concept to production. However, the necessity of using RP for short-run manufacturing is continuously driving a development of a cost-effective technique that will produce completely-finished quality parts in a very short time. To meet these demands, the improvements in production speed, accuracy materials, and cost are crucial. Thus, a new hybrid-RP system performing both deposition and machining in a station is proposed in this paper. It incorporates both material deposition in layers and material removal from the outer surface of the layer to produce the required surface finish. The new hybrid-RP system can dramatically reduce the total build time and fabricate largo-sized and freeform objects because it uses very thick layers, i.e.