Book review
C.K. Chua, K.F. Leong and C.S. LimNanyang Technological UniversitySingapore981-238-117-1 $58/£39981-238-120-1(pbk) US$38/£26World Scientific2nd Edition2003448 p.Publishing date: March 2003
Keywords: Books, Rapid prototyping
It is possible that more manufacturing technologies have been invented in the last two decades than any other period in human history. While some of these have evolved from long established processes (e.g. multi-axis machining centres), today's plethora of layered manufacturing systems appear to have emerged from a technological "big bang" in the mid-1980s. Since the first stereolithography machines established the feasibility of digitally controlled,additive manufacturing a quarter of a century ago, numerous variations have been developed until now there are over 40 different processes available commercially.
This breakneck pace of development has open up a substantial gap on the bookshelves of both academic and practising engineers. The authors of "Rapid Prototyping: principles and applications" have attempted to fill this gap with a comprehensive overview of these new technologies that extends from the fundamental chemistry of photopolymerization through to details of the largest LENS machine's build-volume.
The core of the book is three chapters that detail the various liquid, solid and powder based rapid prototyping (RP) systems currently available. The principles of each system are individually described with supporting schematics and photographs.
Preceding these technology focused sections are two context setting chapter that introduce readers to the role of prototypes in product development and establishes a "process chain" (independent of the RP system being used) which describes a series of generic steps such as modelling and post-processing.
Having established the context and technical details of RP, the book continues with chapters covering the fine points of the STL data format (the Esperanto of 3D CAD models used to interface with RP systems) and an interesting survey of RP applications in different industry sectors (e.g. aerospace,automotive, etc.). The STL chapter is notable for the depth of coverage given to an algorithm for healing faulty data.
The book concludes with an overview of issues such as comparative benchmarking, bureau services and the direction of future developments in the industry.
Because of the lead times inherent in publishing, and the nature of the RP industry, the authors must be commended for their, largely successful, efforts in hitting "a moving target".
I have used material from this book to support University classes on RP and found that the student found the generic organisation of processes into the three families (i.e. liquid, powder and solid) very useful.
Although the videos (on the accompanying CD) are mostly rather poor quality,promotional films; the class still found them a valuable aid to visualising the processes underlying the major systems.
Beyond education the breadth of the book's coverage will ensure it is useful to a wide range of readers; CAM researchers will find the details of STL healing valuable, while industrial readers will find the appendix detailing various benchmarking reports a useful resource.
However, the book is not perfect and in later editions it would be nice if the parameters of each system where characterised in the same way; the current edition's tabular format varies in both content and order (for example, mass of the LENS machine is reported, but not the Vanguard si2).
Also in the system description chapters, summaries of the information found in each of the different subsections would be useful for quick comparison of capabilities.
Lastly, although the book clearly contains new material, the updating is not exhaustive, for example a table of Estimated RP equipment costs is based on 1995 prices.
However, overall readers cannot help but be impressed with the variety and capabilities of the technologies described, and the insights provided by this book. More details are available via Amazon's "search inside" facility that allows potential readers to browse the contents and other selected chapter online (www.amazon.com).
Jonathan CorneyScottish Manufacturing Institute, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK
