RAPID PROTOTYPING: ADVANCEMENTS IN MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGIES

-“Rapid Prototyping (RP)”/ “Additive Manufacturing” is a non-traditional manufacturing process of a physical part, model or an assembled system, which was invented during the late 1970s or maybe early 1980s and was initiated to be the only manufacturing processes involving no usage of tools, moulds, dies, fixtures etc. for production. The name “Additive Manufacturing” itself suggests the fabrication of product with the addition of material “layer by layer”, unlike the other conventional processes which involve subtraction or rather chipping/cutting of material while manufacturing a product. The Computer Aided Design (CAD) Data is an input to the RP machine, converting which into an STL file format, it produces/fabricates the prototype of the particular model from a variety of materials such as thermoplastics, photopolymers, metals and ceramics in the form of liquid, powder, resins or filaments. The 5 considerable factors, viz. purpose, quality, productivity, complexity and cost have had a major impact on the rapid prototyping success. The technique is basically described for its rapid production of complex structures, models and patterns, which are comparably difficult to produce using traditional manufacturing techniques (e.g. lathe machines, milling machines, press machines etc.). The paper presents a detailed study about Rapid Prototyping, different types of RP techniques, its benefits and limitations over traditional processes, its areas of applications and further