Summary: Recent developments of manufacturing technologies open new paradigms for designers and engineers. The so called digital era has also impacted the traditional manufacturing processes by integrating steps, reducing costs and increasing functionalities. A group of techniques and processes named rapid manufacturing are at disposal of professionals for obtaining free form geometries, personalised products, on-demand production and quick models (rapid prototyping).
All these advantages are being applied in the main industrial sectors, such as automotive, consumer goods and machinery. The successful stories are now being transferred to other high tech devices for aerospace, medicine, military and research facilities. In the last years, there has been a growing interest from other main streamers like arts, jewellery and fashion. A few experiences have been performed in architecture. Probably, the mature of the technologies is now good enough to become useful for architects.
Technical speaking the processes all have the following features:
- Digital: The information is digital from the beginning and flows through each phase.
- Additive: The object is layer by layer obtained.
- Repetitive: The same object can be obtained as many times as requested, independently of the moment in time.
- Tool-less: The process generates the product directly from the digital information.
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