Solid Freeform Fabrication: A New Direction in Manufacturing

Download or read book Solid Freeform Fabrication: A New Direction in Manufacturing written by J.J. Beaman and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-27 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Solid Freeform Fabrication is a set of manufacturing processes that are capable of producing complex freeform solid objects directly from a computer model of an object without part-specific tooling or knowledge. In essence, these methods are miniature manufacturing plants which come complete with material handling, information processing and materials processing. As such, these methods require technical knowledge from many disciplines; therefore, researchers, engineers, and students in Mechanical, Chemical, Electrical, and Manufacturing Engineering and Materials and Computer Science will all find some interest in this subject. Particular subareas of concern include manufacturing methods, polymer chemistry, computational geometry, control, heat transfer, metallurgy, ceramics, optics, and fluid mechanics. History of technology specialists may also find Chapter 1 of interest. Although this book covers the spectrum of different processes, the emphasis is clearly on the area in which the authors have the most experience, thermal laser processing. In particular, the authors have all been developers and inventors of techniques for the Selective Laser Sintering process and laser gas phase techniques (Selective Area Laser Deposition). This is a research book on the subject of Solid Freeform Fabrication.