A CAD/CAM system for process planning and optimization in laminated object manufacturing

Rapid Prototyping (RP) technologies have emerged as a powerful set of manufacturing technologies in recent years. While these technologies invariably provide tremendous time savings over traditional methods for the manufacture of design prototypes, most are still quite inefficient. This paper proposes two ideas: (1), that these processes can be significantly optimized by using better process planning; and (ii), that several of these technologies use similar core planning technologies for optimization. The first hypothesis is verified in this paper by presenting an improved process planning system for one RP technology, Laminated Object Manufacturing. The second observation led us to develop an open architecture planning system for a host of RP technologies. A testbed software system using these ideas has been developed and is presented in this paper. While the methodologies developed can work with the current industry standard STL format for storing object CAD data, the software is planned purely to work using exact solid models and direct slicing methods.