laminated-object manufacturing

[Doug Griffith]

I'm curious if anyone is using their lasers for laminated-object manufacturing, where thin slices are cut and then stacked to produce a 3 dimensional part. I'm researching affordable software for this application and any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

So far:
1) Sketchup - has some low tech slicing ability
2) LaserCamm - appears to be proprietary to their hardware
3) Boxford RapidPro - not sure if thickness can be set or export formats
4) Gizmotec Millit ???

Cheers,
Doug

[Eric Allen]

I did a small item once or twice this way, but it's not the most efficient route. There are small, non-laser based units now for about $5,000 if I recall right that actually do what you are looking for, assuming the part is under the 5.5" or so workspace area. They use a kind of plastic deposition. With the laser, you can build the object in Corel, but it's time consuming and you have to think in 2d and 3d for the machine.

[Kim Vellore]

Doug,
I do that all the time, takes a lot of work to visualize 2D into 3D and draw it up. The more time one takes to draw the more realistic it looks. Here is a couple of pictures of the 2D slices to 3D parts. These are tiny ones, for reference I can fit 4 golf carts on one quarter. I'll be the first one to jump at any software that helps in this.

Kim

[Eric Allen]

Doug,
I do that all the time, takes a lot of work to visualize 2D into 3D and draw it up. The more time one takes to draw the more realistic it looks. Here is a couple of pictures of the 2D slices to 3D parts. These are tiny ones, for reference I can fit 4 golf carts on one quarter. I'll be the first one to jump at any software that helps in this.

Kim

What material did you use to make the carts? And do you make the little people too? Those are nifty:) The one on the right side of the quarter looks just like the one I'm driving today:)

[Scott Challoner]

What Eric is talking about is a Desktop Factory 3d printer and they look pretty cool http://www.desktopfactory.com/ with prices coming down, they envision people downloading files and printing their own toys, parts, etc.

Vectric has a product that slices called Cut 3D and it is $300. PartWorks 3D is what comes with Shopbots and they sell it for $700. Both of these will slice.

The Desktop Factory and Shopbot are definetely two things on my wishlist.

[Kim Vellore]

What material did you use to make the carts? And do you make the little people too? Those are nifty:) The one on the right side of the quarter looks just like the one I'm driving today:)


Eric,
I used 1/64" thick 3 ply plywood. You get this plywood in airplane model shops. The golf carts are 1:220 (Z) scale model, the people are off the shelf, used in Z scale train models.

Kim

[Joni Campbell]

Now that is interesting.

[Doug Griffith]

Kim, very cool!!!

Essentially what I'm looking for is a solution to create rough 3 dimensional parts by stacking laser cut layers. Exporting 2 1/2 axis CNC roughing passes to vector files could possibly work if the z-axis height can be set. G-code to DXF might work. HPGL to DXF would be ugly. It would be great if there was a software solution to do this for lasers, plasma, water-jet, etc... The RapidPro solution is very close but the z height needs to be adjustable and it needs to export instead of driving a vinyl cutter.

A few things:
Thanks Scott. I looked up Vectic and found there's an "r" missing. The company name is Vectric. Cut3D and Partworks look close to "laser compatible" with a whole lot of tweaking. Each slice would need to be flattened into 2 2D paths along the outermost and innermost dimensions. I would then create the cut path by blending with a single step between the 2. This would find the midway point.

It appears JP System 5 is the American version of Boxford RapidPro.

Still looking for answers,
Doug

[Steven Smith]

Back in the day I used to play around with a freeware program called POY-ray. Your request reminded me of the program... I found this site:
http://www.candyfab.org/ where experimenters are doing crude but imaginative fabrication. Their machine uses hot air and sugar to build 3D objects.
One of the features of a POV-ray 'script' is that one can look at slices during the rendering process and then save each rendered slice as a series of frames. From there it would be a simple matter of importing the series of images into Corel convert to vectors and process your material.
Additional information is available from:
http://www.evilmadscientist.com and
http://www.povray.org/

[Doug Griffith]

More info for those who are interested:
The talkshopbot.com forum has an informative post on the subject, albeit for CNC. Search for: "Slicing 3D Models" (post 18248). It appears that Artcam, Autocad and Rhino all have slicing abilities.

More interesting software that can be applicable to laser cutting, Lamina by Lamina Design and Pepakura.

Cheers