Rapid Prototyping And CNC Trade Off
Friday, March 13th, 2009While Rapid Prototyping is much advanced in characteristics compared to the traditional CNC technologies, they also incorporate some of the technologies of the later. However, it has been argued by some quarters that the blend of RP and CNC could produce greater accuracy in results than when you operate either of the methodologies as stand alone.
The logic behind this argument is that even the world’s fastest rapid prototyping can contain compounded errors. The subtractive technologies could be effectively used to rectify these compounded errors made using the additive process. That is why sometimes the manufacturers incorporate some parts of the subtractive methodologies in their additive technologies. The inkjet based methods are best examples of such combination.
Trade off between CNC and RP has always been the one of speed with accuracy where as the trade off between divergent RP methodologies is the versatility of materials used. Of course there are many who won’t believe that at its best even the CNC could match the accuracy of the RP. And when it comes to speed and versatility, RP leaves the traditional CNC miles behind.
Comparisons between CNC and RP are mostly made using the stereo-lithography, the earliest RP model, as the starting point. It is assessed that stereo-lithography can give you accuracy in the range of plus minus 0.004 inches in a dimension of around six inches. A better provider however can cause these differences to erase easily. ZoomRP.com is the fastest rapid prototype service available and you can verify the results obtaining their services.