Rapid Manufacturing

Rapid Manufacturing (RM) is the outcome and the subsequent phase of Rapid Prototyping (RP). An offshoot of RM is Rapid Tooling (RT). Thus, RM concerns itself with RP and RT at the present stage. All three are undergoing improvements and therefore the boundaries between them frequently overlap. RM is also known as direct digital manufacturing because RM has become a generic term meaning any process that can manufacture rapidly, thus, the Society of Manufacturing Engineers have adopted a new term, direct digital manufacturing, to avoid any confusion. With RM end-use items are produced without molding, machining, or casting, by successful employment of the additive fabrication process of RP.

The advantages of RM are numerous and it has far reaching consequences. In the RM environment, changes in the product design are affordably, effectively, and simply undertaken by changing the relevant CAD data. This gives the opportunity to formulate a strategic decision to redesign solely on the needs of the product and the customer, rather decide based on the decision matrix consisting of other influencing parameters like opportunity costs, tooling costs, labor costs, and manufacturing costs that effect the business operations.
With three quantifiable measures of initial savings on tooling, savings on rework, and increased sales revenue, the business experiences a positive Return On Investment (ROI), along with profit improvement, continuous product improvement, scrap reduction, and the freedom to redesign, thereby justifying its decision to shift from the traditional manufacturing processes to RM.

Several industries are benefited with RM, which is considered by many as the next industrial revolution.

Rapid Manufacturing has practical applications in several industries like aerospace, military, biomedicine, marine, automotive, architecture, education, sports, electronics, robotics, genetics, photonics, and consumer items, to name a few. Gases and liquids need to be filtered and thus Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), a RM technology, can make ceramic filters.

Due to the powders being used as building materials in SLS, the manufactured products of SLS exhibit a characteristic porosity, which can be successfully utilized by the manufactured filters, to be applied in foodservice manufacturing applications, semiconductor manufacturing applications, automotive applications, and power station applications.
Any application needing a layered and/or porous characteristics, like batteries, injection molding parts, nozzles, etc., readily adapt to RM.

Medical applications are like manufacture of prostheses, and complex parts used in medical equipments. Microstereolithography has expanding applications in microrobotics. RM can effectively handle items needing complex fractal geometrical shapes like a static mixer.
Aerospace industry has always been a major supporter of RM, and aircraft parts like ventilating components, air-ducts, jet engine components, etc., are being fabricated by RM.
The use of plastic and metal affect every industry. RM is highly suitable to both and parts are being made with RT techniques for the engineering, marine, automotive and other industries.

Consumer electronics like television sets, mobile phones, DVD players, etc., have increased RM applications in the form of cabinets, cases, switches and other parts. RM is still evolving and with every passing day, the range of practical applications is growing.