Hi world,
Currently, I am writing from Institute of Armament Technology (IAT), Pune. Here I have joined as a sci-B in DRDO and undergoing the post-induction training. It is a different but equally interesting envrionment as IITB. Lots of water has flown since I left IITB, but I don’t think I can outline all of it here.
We had a great lecture on rapid prototyping (RP in short) from a scientist at GTRE (Gas Turbine Research Establishment), Bangalore.
The idea is to crate a physical model out of epoxy resin straight from the CAD model. Epoxy resin (areldite fame) has a property of solidifying on exposure to laser.
RP relies on very simple but powerful method – get the co-ordinates of the object from the CAD model, slice the model in very small (few tesns of microns) slices. The laser beam hovers over the epoxy resin filled platform. The platform shifts downward in discrete steps of few microns. In each step, laser beam is guided to sketch out a particular slice. In this way, the complete 3D prototype gets built in no time.
The most terrific aspect of this is that, this method works independent of geometrical complexity of component.
On medical front also, there is a great application. The remarkable example of this is a successful operation of tweens conjoined at head. In this case, the doctor had to disjoin the tweens who had separate brains but common blood supply and skull. The doctors took CT-scan images and created a 3D model of the head out of it. This 3D model was realised in epoxy-rasin using RP technology. The doctor could practice on this model before performing the actual operation.
