• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
• /
• 2003.06a
• /
• pp.50-53
• /
• 2003

Most companies use technologies such as stereolithography, selective laser sintering, and fused deposition modeling to make parts for such small consumer products as telephones, heads, and shoes. The largest part that the existing RP systems can make is only 600 mm in length. Because most RP systems build parts by depositing, solidifying, or sintering material point-by-point, making larger objects takes a long time. and in many cases, large objects won't fit the build size. A new effective thick-layered RP process. Transfer type Variable Lamination Manufacturing using expandable polystyrene foam (VLM-ST) has been developed with thick layers and sloped surfaces. In this paper, a scaledown model of F16 Fighter with the length of 800 mm is rapidly fabricated using the VLM-ST process. In order to build a CAD model of F16 larger than 600 mm in length, the approach in VLM-ST is to build larger parts in multiple sub-parts and then glue them together. The fabricated result shows that the VLM-ST process employing thick layers and sloped surfaces is adequate for creating the real-sized large objects in the diverse fields such as automobiles, electric home appliances, electronics. and etc.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
• /
• v.19 no.7
• /
• pp.97-105
• /
• 2002

The use of rapid prototyping (RP) has reduced time to market, cut total costs and improved product quality by giving design and manufacturing teams the opportunity to verify and fine tune designs before committing them to expensive tooling and fabrication. In order to improve their unique characteristics according to the working principles, Variable Lamination Manufacturing process (VLM-ST) and corresponding CAD/CAM software (VLM-Slicer) is developed. The objective of this study is to improve the accuracy of VLM-ST process, and it can be done by offset fur cutting error correction, cutting path overrun fur sharp edge and reference shape generation for off-line stacking. It has been shown that, through the verification experiments for given practical shapes, the proposed algorithms are effective for diverse categories of three-dimensional shapes.

• Korean Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
• /
• v.7 no.3
• /
• pp.148-156
• /
• 2002

Most Rapid Prototyping (RP) processes adopt a solid Computer Aided Design (CAD) model, which will be sliced into thin layers of constant thickness in the building direction. Each cross-sectional layer is successively deposited and, simultaneously, bonded onto the previous layer; and eventually the stacked layers from a physical part of the model. A new RP process, the transfer-type Variable Lamination Manufacturing process using expandable polystyrene foam sheet (VLM-ST), has been developed to reduce building time and to improve the surface finish of parts with the thick layers and a sloping surface. This paper describes the generation of Unit Shape Layer (USL), the cutting path data of the linen. hotwire cutter for the VLM-ST process. USL is a three-dimensional layer with a thickness of more than 1 mm and a side slope, and it is the basic unit of cutting and building in the VLM-ST process. USL includes data such as layer thickness, positional coordinates, side angles of each layer, hotwire cutting speed, the heat input to the hotwire, and reference shape. The procedure of generating USL is as follows: (1)Generation of the mid-slice from the CAD model, (2)Conversion of the mid-slice into a simply connected domain, (3)Generation to the reference shape for the mid-slice, (4)Calculation of the rotation angle of the hotwire of the cutting system.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
• /
• v.19 no.7
• /
• pp.71-79
• /
• 2002

A new rapid prototyping process, Variable Lamination Manufacturing using a 4-axis-controlled hotwire cutter and expandable polystyrene foam sheet as a laminating material of the part (VLM-S), has been developed to reduce building time and to improve the surface finish of parts. The objective of this study is to reconstruct the surface of the original 3D CAD model in order to generate mid-slice data using the advancing front technique. The generation of 3D layers by a 4 axis-controlled hot-wire cutter requires a completely different procedure to generate toolpath data unlike the conventional RP CAD systems. The cutting path data for VLM-S are created by VLM-Slicer, which is a special CAD/CAM software with automatic generation of 3D toolpath. For the conventional sheet type system like LOM, the STL file would be sliced into 2D data only. However, because of using the thick layers and a sloping edge with the firstorder approximation between the top and bottom layers, VLM-Slicer requires surface reconstruction, mid-slice, and the toolpath data generation as well as 2D slicing. Surface reconstruction demands the connection between the two neighboring cross-sectional contours using the triangular facets. VLM-S employs thick layers with finite thickness, so that surface reconstruction is necessary to obtain a sloping angle of a side surface and the point data at a half of the sheet thickness. In the process of the toolpath data generation the surface reconstruction algorithm is expected to minimize the error between the ruled surface and the original parts..