Postby Rblackadar » 17 Feb 2009 16:47
When I was a designer at Rubbermaid, they really were up to date with all the technology to stay competitive. We had all those tools except for the printer which is more recent, but they had the other prototyping machines that fed the nylon thread and the stereo lithography machines. Very cool stuff. When the prototype was finished, you could feel the grooves in between the threads so it had to be sanded down afterwards. The other type was made in a bath where a laser would shoot down and react with the solution forming a solid resin material...when the section was done, the tray would drop and it would build the next layer on top of that, and so on and so on until the part was completed. I didn't work so much with them but from what little I remember.....very cool stuff indeed.