Given the reality of Army transportability, and the new requirement for 96-hour deployment anywhere in the world, the MPH is a compact communications and manufacturing unit. It is designed to be transported quickly to remote locations for emergency repair of non-operational equipment.

• Acombination of advanced technologies enables the MPH to quickly, and efficiently produce repair parts on demand.

• The MPH retrieves manufacturing data via satellite from an extensive solid-model database of parts.

• In the event of no data or a communications failure, the MPH is capable of gathering its own geometric data through the use of a laser scanning system.

• The data can be sent to an engineering CAD package, and then on to the CNC machining center, or to the laser-sintering machine for production.

The benefits of the MPH are:

• Flexibility, through the ability to custom manufacture wide ranges of parts on demand.

• Efficiency, because large warehouses are not needed to stock huge amounts of repair parts. Parts are created at the point of need, on demand.

• Mobility, due to the nature of the portable facility housing the machinery. This rapid manufacturing technology will be spread across many areas of the military, and eventually into other fields such as medical, for the production of prosthetics.

SUMMARY

• In the produce or perish world of manufacturing, companies compete to build products better and cheaper, and the manufacturer who does not meet standards of performance will not survive.

• Rapid Prototyping and Manufacturing (RP&M), for the design and producing prototype models, helped to reduce or eliminate manufacturing errors and bring products to the market faster and at lower cost.

• Using Advanced Digital ManufacturingSM (ADM) techniques, existing designs can be manufactured without the costs and lead-time associated with hard tooling.

• ADM is a comprehensive technology that covers the production of a part starting at the design stage, progressing through the prototype development, and ending with the manufacturing stage.

• Stereolithography systems produce highly detailed 3-dimensional parts from digital CAD data or CAD/CAM software.

• Selective Laser Sintering is used primarily for the direct manufacture of small lot quantities of plastic or metal parts used as final products in consumer and industrial markets.

• MultiJet Modeling uses hot-melt ink jet technology to produce models used to verify CAD model geometry, communicate design intent, and obtain design feedback.

• ADM solid-imaging systems provide wide variety of benefits to manufacturers, such reduced tooling, complex design capabilities, cost savings for low production runs, and quick design changes.

For more information on ADVANCED DIGITAL MANUFACTURING see the Website:

www.3dsystems.com

Copyright 2004, Industrial Press, Inc., New York, NY