A CAD/CAM system for process planning and optimization in LOM (Laminated Object Manufacturing)

Rapid Prototyping (RP) technologies have emerged as a powerful set of manuf acturing technologies in recent years. While these technologies invariably provide tremendous time savings over traditional methods for the manufactur e of design prototypes, most are still quite inefficient. This paper propos es two ideas: (i), that these processes can be significantly optimized by u sing better process planning; and (ii), that several of these technologies use similar core planning technologies for optimization. The first hypothes is is verified in this paper by presenting an improved process planning sys tem for one RP technology, Laminated Object Manufacturing (LOM). The second observation led us to develop an open architecture planning system for a h ost of RP technologies. A testbed software system using these ideas has bee n developed and is presented in this paper. While the methodologies develop ed can work with the current industry standard STL format for storing objec t CAD data, the software is planned purely to work using exact solid models and direct slicing methods.