|
3-D prototyping technology is grabbing the
attention of people far beyond just the metalcasting industry.
Here's a letter that appeared in a recent edition of Wired
a magazine:
"With regard to 'Personal Fabrication
on Demand' (Wired 9.04), imagine you are a maintenance
engineer at a satellite office and one of your machines has
had a mechancial failure. In need of a replacment part, you
call HQ and have its computer hooked up to yours, while someone
there instructs your Rapid Prototype machine (now called a
Repair Part machine) to produce the component. Of course,
the piece of equipment was designed expressly for this contingency:
Parts must be producible in the field. (I recently saw one
made of sintered brass, so metals are a possibility.)
"What have you accomplished? Well, you
didn't have to store a bunch of spare parts you may never
use, you didn't have to ship all those spare parts you may
never use, and you didn't even have to make all those spare
parts to begin with. This is especially meaningful if you
are in a really remote area . . . like Mars."
(Robert Fabris - porthole@worldnet.att.net)
|
