GARPA | Global Alliance of Rapid Prototyping Associations

GARPA Newsletters

2007
August Presentation files from the Rapid Manufacturing conference in the U.K. are now available online at http://www.rm-conference.com/papers/ [close]

2007
July GARPA Column TCT 15/2 Terry Wohlers Welcome to the new GARPA column. GARPA is the Global Alliance of Rapid Prototyping Associations. It was formed in 1998 to network groups and associations from around the world. Ian Gibson, now at the National University of Singapore, and I came up with the idea when the two of us were attending an event in Hong Kong in April 1997. Our original goal then was, and still is, to encourage the exchange of information across international borders. GARPA currently consists of 19 member countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. They are listed at www.garpa.org. The members of GARPA participate in a range of business, technical and social activities. Among the most important is GARPA’s contribution to industrial and academic events and technical conferences. GARPA’s annual global summit meeting has always been scheduled to coincide with a conference, so a technical session on international trends and developments is usually organised at the event with participation from GARPA. To date, GARPA has held meetings and participated in events in China, England, Finland, France, Germany, Portugal, South Africa and the US. The members of the associations that GARPA represents are transitioning to new and exciting applications of additive fabrication technology. Once used entirely for modelling and prototyping, additive processes are expanding into a wider range of areas. Among them are medical implants, dentistry, jewellery, entertainment (for example data from video games) and architecture/engineering/construction (A/E/C). These industrial sectors are large and represent hundreds of billions of dollars, but each comes with a unique set of requirements and challenges. Targeting, reaching, selling, supporting,and servicing each sector requires resources that extend beyond what is available today among many of the companies in this business. The A/E/C industry alone is enormous and stands to benefit from what additive fabrication has to offer, but penetrating this market will not be easy. The 19 groups and associations that make up GARPA are poised to help organisations around the world make the move to many of these interesting applications, industries and markets. Rapid manufacturing (RM) is the next frontier. GARPA members recognise it, but they also understand the host of challenges that RM presents. A company that embraces RM today is faced with qualifying and certifying a particular material and process for the products being manufactured. This can be an expensive task and a deterrent to companies that are considering RM. A need exists to establish testing procedures for these materials and processes to ease the transition to RM. GARPA is not a standards organisation, but it could play a role in promoting and endorsing procedures and standards that another organisation or government body has developed. In the future, individuals associated with GARPA will write this column. In the future, it might summarise a recent GARPA event or provide results of interesting research that is being conducted by a GARPA member. Most members of GARPA are well informed, connected and equipped to tackle difficult subjects, such as the opportunities and challenges associated with new applications, rapid manufacturing and what the future holds. It is my hope that this column informs and provides helpful insight. Industry consultant and analyst Terry Wohlers, is Principal Consultant and President of Wohlers Associates, Inc. Visit http://wohlersassociates.com for more information. [c

2007
January GARPA News 2007 By Dr Ian Gibson National University of Singapore The most recent GARPA summit meeting was held in Helsinki, Finland, in conjunction with the International Conference on Rapid Prototyping and Manufacturing, organized by the Finnish Rapid Prototyping Association, FIRPA (www.isv.hut.fi/icrpmf), September 2006. I was honoured to attend as a keynote speaker at this event, which was my first trip to Finland, and hopefully not the last. My congratulations go out to Jukka Tuomi and his team for organizing an excellent conference with a host of wonderful presentations. This event was the start of a revelation to me where I noted a distinct change in the attitude towards GARPA and I have also gained a real understanding of the potential this alliance has. As I have just written, my first indication came from the GARPA global summit meeting itself. FIRPA were very keen to turn their usual local association conference into something much bigger and much more meaningful. Through GARPA, FIRPA were able to transform this conference into an event that attracted delegates from far and wide, including South Africa, US, China and Singapore, as well as from most countries in Europe. It’s fair to say that FIRPA could have achieved this without the aid of GARPA, but it is also quite clear that the alliance was a very effective way of attracting delegates from very far away. The summit meeting, which was held on the evening before the conference began, was attended by representatives from 10 different countries. Many of these representatives had made special efforts to ensure they attended this summit meeting. Much of the discussion during that meeting was about how GARPA can promote and strengthen its position as an influence within the global RP community. Maybe there’s a need to consolidate the activities of GARPA by obtaining funding to support a permanent, full-time secretariat. I think that eventually this will happen, so please watch this space for developments… Further indication of the awareness of GARPA from the wider community has come from the increasing number of activities that GARPA are being asked to endorse. As well as the numerous RP conferences, like the FIRPA one and the ICMA to be held in Singapore in May 2007 (www.icma07.org), GARPA has been approached by a number of professional conference organizers to assist in promoting and endorsing their conferences. Euromold (www.euromold.com) is a huge exhibition held in Frankfurt every year around November/December that has numerous conferences and workshops attached to it, many of which are very relevant to RP users and researchers. In fact, Euromold has been associated with GARPA for a few years now, through GARPA co-founder Terry Wohlers who presents regularly at this event. Product Development Excellence Week however was a new event held in Shanghai in November 2006 (www.pdewchina.com), organized by Mena Maxson. The Rapid Product Development conference in Kuala Lumpur was another new event held in December 2006 and organized by Marcus Evans (www.marcusevans.com). Both of these companies found it beneficial to be associated with GARPA and kindly offered GARPA members a discount on the conference fees. Sure, there are numerous other GARPA sponsored conferences and activities, but the main reason I single these two events out is because they contacted GARPA from outside the standard RP community. I think GARPA is working. [close]

2006
Spring Welcome to GARPA News, the official newsletter of the Global Alliance of RP Associations (GARPA). The Global Alliance, and its annual meeting, the Global Summit were formed to encourage on-going sharing of information across international borders. As a part of this sharing, its members from around the world explore and conduct activities that help convey the benefits of rapid prototyping and related technologies. Rapid Manufacture and GARPA By Ian Gibson & Monica Savalani National University of Singapore I’m sure anyone working in RP, either in industry or academia, will be aware that Rapid Manufacturing (RM) has generated a great deal of interest in recent times. I would also find it hard to believe anyone working in RP doesn’t know of the Wohlers Report. At the time of writing this article the 2006 version of the Wohlers Report is not yet available, but perhaps at the time of reading it should confirm that RM will have an increasing influence on how RP develops in the years to come. In his report, Terry Wohlers defines RM as “The direct production of finished goods from additive fabrication”. The report attributed 8% of all RP parts manufactured in 2004 to this definition. Whether you agree with this definition or not, it is clear that this sector has grown strongly in recent years. In fact RM didn’t even exist in most people’s eyes as little as 5 years ago. As you know, the Global Alliance of Rapid Prototyping Associations, GARPA, was established to provide a means for supporting the development of RP communities around the world. Still very much a voluntary organization, GARPA assists in promoting RP and allows the smaller associations to develop themselves and gain benefit from the larger ones. Regular meetings are held around the world and GARPA compiles case studies, newsletters, conference reports, competitions, and other RP-related material, which is available for all to see on the recently redesigned and updates website of www.garpa.org. The Rapid Prototyping Journal is also very happy to be the official journal of GARPA. Since Rapid Manufacture is such a hot topic at the moment, it seems appropriate that there should be a GARPA view on this. A review of the literature on RM will show that there are already a number of successful cases paving the way for greater involvement from more companies in the future. The three industrial sectors that have always pioneered RP since the start are aerospace, automotive, and medical. These industrial sectors also seem to be leading the way in RM. The most obvious cases are medical devices, specifically hearing aids and orthodontic aligners. The approach here is to modify existing designs to include patient-specific data to suit individual cases. This is an obvious application area that takes advantage of the ability that RP has to fabricate freeform structures without additional machining overheads. Automotive industry has reported significant cost savings related to parts that were critical to unveiling new car models on time. Aerospace takes benefit from RM because of the low volume of parts that it generally deals with, reducing times and costs by not having to create tooling. Other applications exist in consumer and designer products, toys, jewelry and sculpture, and probably many other areas too. The reasons for these applications stem from the improvements in RP technology in recent years, partly at least from the research carried out by authors and subscribers to this journal. Geographically it seems that most of the interest in RM comes from the US and Europe. A review of RM activity amongst GARPA members has resulted in the following: The Rapid Technologies and Additive Manufacturing (RTAM) Technical Community of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers in the US has focused on RM for some time now. For example, the annual Rapid Prototyping and Manufacturing Conference held by the SME has a regular focus session on “Rapid Manufacturing: Tomorrow's Manufacturing Today”. The Irish Rapid Design and Manufacturing Network also held a workshop on “Rapid Manufacturing Technologies” in late 2004. The University of Loughborough in the UK seems to have conducted the most detailed and comprehensive studies into RM and researchers from there are frequently invited to talk to the UK and other RP Associations in Europe. In July 2006 there is to be conference on the subject of RM, organized by and held at the University of Loughborough. Examples of industrial and governmental initiatives can be found in the UK in the form of the Direct Write Initiative set up in 2005 by the UK Dept. of Trade and Industry and the interest from the Aerospace Innovation Growth Team (AIGT) on RM-based logistics. In Germany, interest in RM is quite extensive. Major focus lies in the provision of guidelines and standards to improve collaboration and corporation between customers and service providers. The NC Gesellschaft e.V. established a working circle on the subject of RM and held the first workshop on the subject in Ulm, Nov. 2005. Amongst these workshops, various trade shows such as Euromold and Rapid.Tech are held to display new developments to a broad audience. A promising example of industrial applicable parts with great potential is the functional robot gripper developed at the Fraunhofer IPA. This device could realize 5 million cycles. In Finland, materials research for RM is quite extensive. EOS, Sheet metal innovations (SMI) and Helsinki University of Technology (HUT) have developed new applications and metal powder materials for the direct metal laser sintering (DLMS) process. They are also testing incremental sheet forming (ISF) deformation mechanism and sheet metal material behavior after forming process using a robot. These advancements and research studies have raised interest from heavy and mid-heavy mechanical engineering sectors such as forest machinery, ventilation components and transport vehicles. The Finnish Rapid Prototyping Association (FIRPA) also organized a national seminar which focused on rapid manufacturing in medical applications. In Singapore, the first workshop on RM was held in early 2006 and was attended by around 100 people representing more than 30 companies. A recent follow-up has found that there are already some RM activities in Singapore and an increasing amount of interest, particularly in the aerospace sector. In China, significant interest lies in cell controlled assembly in the RM sector. A major source of funding for such projects comes from the National natural foundation of China. The first international workshop on biomanufacturing at Tsinghua University which focused on Rapid Manufacturing was held in July 2005. Over 1000 people attended the TEAMTECH 2006 event in Bangalore in India, where Rapid Manufacture was a keynote topic. A meeting will be held in April 2006 between academics and researchers from India and the US where RM will again be a key topic So it is clear that there is a large and increasing amount of interest in RM around the world. It is interesting to note that RM, as defined here, is generally not carried out where most manufacturing is carried out; namely in Asia. Could we see RM as redressing the balance, or are we to expect an upsurge of activity in Asia in the years to come? Time will tell. [close]

2000
Spring Different GARPA member organizations report on the life of RP in their countries. Some details are given on development of RP, RT and RM in favour of new application fields and for new technologies. They also give some strategic orientations about what should be applications of RP, RT and RM during the next few years in their countries. State of the RP & RT industries in Canada By Millan Yeung National Research Council, Canada There is a small addition of new RP systems in 1999. The situation of the market in Canada shifted from hot to saturate through the course of the year. However, the geographic size of the market has expanded to outside North America. Research and development activities grew rapidly in 1999. According to the feed back I received from industries and research institutions, there are a small number of new installations of RP systems last year. FDM equipment dominated these additions and was followed by Z-Corp and LOM systems. For the first time, the number of installations in research and academic institutions surpassed the number of installations in industries. The market for RP & RT services grew rapidly in the earlier part of 1999 and gradually settled to a steady pace near the end of the year. US customers continued to dominate the clienteles of these service bureaus. Although the business from US has slowed down but businesses from other parts of the world including Europe, Asia and Australia have picked up. Reviewing the comments returned to me from industries, many of the users felt frustrated by the poor quality and over-expectation of the current state of RP & RT. Several major tier-one suppliers in the automotive industry emphasized the importance of the accuracy and durability of their functional prototypes (or parts in small quantity) and tools for production. In the early stage of marketing or contract competition, they require prototypes that are functional to demonstrate the functionality of the product and must be produced within days in order to compete with their competitors. In the case of plastic injection molding, the tool must be strong enough to produce 1,000's of parts and accurate enough to produce parts that are applicable. Again, it should be delivered within 2 to 4 weeks. They are willing to pay premium costs for these prototypes and tools. Aerospace industries in Canada also exploring the options of applying RP & RT because of the increase of global competition but they also share the concerns of the automotive industries. Indeed, they are even more cautious with this approach. The world-renowned Canadian telecommunication and medical industries are also investing in RP & RT but have the similar concerns of the others. In seeing the needs from industries and the deficiency of the current state of the technology, Canadian research community puts in extraordinary effort in the research and development of RP & RT. Universities, research institutions across the country established many research programs aimed at improving the technology and satisfying the needs. To name a few newsworthy developments, the National Research Council of Canada, in complement to their strong RP & RT research program, constructed and opened a multi-million dollars, world unique Virtual Environment Technologies Center in London, Ontario to pursue the research and development in rapid product development. The Queen's University in Kingston developed a rapid prototyping process to form sheet metals with a single pointed tool. The Memorial University of Newfoundland is developing a rapid prototyping method to build large scale and low cost components for ship hulls. The University of Toronto is developing a rapid prototyping technology to build metal parts based on droplet deposition approach. The University of Calgary developed a method to improve the performance of the Cubital system. The Centennial College in Toronto opened a large technology center dedicated for the training of personnel for RP & RT industries. All these efforts further confirmed Canadian leadership in this emerging area of RP & RT. RP & RT is here to stay in Canada but will not be in the current form for long. The technology will grow only when its capability to make functional prototypes and production tools improved to the degree acceptable for industries. In light of all the research and development efforts being pursued by Canadian and around the world, a step change of the technology will not be far away. I foresee that this step change will occur within the next 5 years or sooner. New Applications, Developments, and Trends in Finland By Jukka Tuomi Finnish Rapid Prototyping Association Materials Development for Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) in RPI Finnish Company Electrolux Rapid Development, ERD which has developed and manufactured materials for EOS/DMLS process started this year as restructured company. ERD's business activities were outsourced and a new company, Rapid Product Innovations (RPI), has been established for carrying on the work. Company's active management and two European venture capital funds are the new shareholders. The company has had success in developing rapid tooling applications for the DMLS process. If we follow the development from the year 1996 we can recognize that they have reduced the layer thickness by 50 % after every two years development work. By the same they have been able to develop applications starting from prototype injection molding tools followed by short serial production tools for injection molding and prototype tooling for die casting. At a moment they are using steel based powder with layer thickness 0.02 mm. According to the company representatives applications in the area of direct manufacturing of mechanical engineering components (Rapid Manufacturing) is raising rapidly. German company EOS will start marketing the newest material in the near future. Investments for Wider Product Development Services in RPC Since 1997 Finnish rapid prototyping service market has been divided with RPI (ERD) and RPC. Their common market share is in 70 - 80 % level (editors own estimation). Interesting differences in business strategies can be seen. While RPI is investing to deep understanding and development of rapid tooling and manufacturing processes and applications the company RPC has put it's efforts to be able to serve it's customers with a wider service palette. Originally RPC operated SLA and offered vacuum casting and investment casting as secondary processes. In the end of the year 1999 they started two other operations - RPC Design Ltd for industrial design and 3D CAD services and RPC Tools Ltd for production tooling and injection molding. Company management has strong confidence in service bureau market development trend to "from an idea to a product" direction. With this concept the company relies on that since 1995 demonstrated 100 % yearly growth will continue in the coming next years. For more information see http://www.rpc.fi/ . DeskArtes Near Future Developments Are in the Area of Rapid Tooling Functionality The Helsinki based company DeskArtes Oy is one of the world leading software vendors for the RP markets. The DeskArtes Expert Series products specialize in error detection, repair and faceting of IGES and VDA-FS files, also offering functionality for computing boolean combinations, offsets and repair of STL models. For communicating 3D CAD data, DeskArtes has made the View Expert product available for free downloading at http://www.deskartes.com/ . The DeskArtes products are available on Windows and UNIX, with a version recently announced also on Linux. (Finnish father of Linux, Linus Torvalds studied in Helsinki University when he started developing the operating system Linux.) DeskArtes' future products will introduce new functionality directed especially to Rapid Tooling, such as automated mold creation, as well as 3D CAD capabilities and direct slicing of NURBS surfaces. For more information see http://www.deskartes.com/ . For more information see http://www.rapid-product-innovations.fi/ . [close]

1999
Spring In the first part of this issue, GARPA member organizations report on funding mechanisms and incentives available to rapid prototyping initiatives in their region of the world. Important news, activities, breakthroughs and events associated with their group or association are shared in the second part. If you are interested in membership or in learning more about any of these 14 organisations, contact the appropriate individuals listed above. Government Support for RP in Hong Kong By Ian Gibson Hong Kong Society for Rapid Prototyping, Tooling & Manufacturing The Hong Kong government is generally well known for its laissez faire policies and simple taxation structure. In general, all companies are regarded the same way and subject to the same rules. This does not mean, however, that the Hong Kong government wouldn't like particular industries to be here, and there are some funding mechanisms to assist the development of new technologies. These mechanisms are administered through the Hong Kong Industry Department. Industry Department funding can be obtained in the form of Industry Support Funding (ISF) or Applied Research Funding (ARF). ISF has been known to support RP technology transfer, most notably the Rapid Prototyping Centre set up by the Hong Kong Productivity Council in 1996. This Centre provides a range of facilities, built around two SLA machines, for industrial evaluation of RP technology. ISF funding also helped set up a centre at The University of Hong Kong to evaluate SLS RapidTools in a Hong Kong context. For 1999-2000, ISF will focus on biotechnology, electronics, IT, metals, plastics, and textile & clothing industries. The focus on metals and plastics includes heavy emphasis on advanced mould making technologies, design processes, and CNC machining. Applications that lead to rapid tooling should therefore attract attention. But it should be emphasised that this is primarily for transfer of existing, state-of-the-art technology for productive use in Hong Kong and not for assistance in developing new technologies. Companies which are incorporated in Hong Kong and which have substantial connection to Hong Kong are eligible to apply for ARF funding to turn new ideas into commercial prospects. Companies must have a significant proportion of their research, design, development, production, management or general business activities located in Hong Kong. The project concerned must have a technology or R&D element. There are many sources of academic research funding in Hong Kong. The most important of these arecompetitive research grants obtained from the Research Grants Council (RGC). Funding is awarded purely on the basis of academic merit and has no strategic element. RGC does award strategic funding as well through Areas of Excellence. Universities also implement a strategic funding policy through block grant allocation. Whilst RP has not been overlooked in this process, there is no specific encouragement for research in this area. News from Hong Kong Rapid Prototyping and Manufacturing Society As most people are aware, there has been something of an economic downturn, originating out of Asia as a result of various events in the region. Compared with many countries in Asia, Hong Kong has managed to ride the storm. But even here many companies have gone out of business, unemployment rates are the highest they have been for many years, and manufacturing industry continues to suffer; losing ground in comparison with other sectors in contribution to GDP. But Hong Kong is in many ways a gateway into Mainland China. China is certainly one reason why Hong Kong has not suffered as badly as other parts of Asia. Many Hong Kong companies have significant interest in China, often having manufacturing bases in the Mainland, controlled or gated through a Hong Kong head or regional offices. So if we have any interest in Rapid Prototyping in Hong Kong, we cannot ignore China. As has been mentioned before, it is not easy to determine the exact number of RP machines in Hong Kong since it is possible the machines were purchased here and then used in Mainland China. The number of machines continues to rise and, surprisingly, the RP market still appears quite buoyant. Perhaps this is a result of the pressure OEMs are putting on supplier companies to have 3D CAD and RP in place before they can become preferred suppliers. Anyway, realising that the future of RP in Hong Kong is inextricably linked to Mainland China, the Hong Kong Society for RPT&M has arranged its first big event, which will be in China. It is scheduled for 15-16th April and will be held at the South China University of Technology. The Society has been very careful to organise this event so as to promote RP without too much hype. Although the major RP vendors will be there, it is definitely a Society event and there will be plenty of opportunity for members and users to provide unbiased input on experience in use of the technology. The event will include tabletop exhibits and a factory tour. Attendees will be encouraged to bring along examples of their products and discuss them in terms of what RP technology will be suitable for their requirements. One of the hopes and plans the Society has for the future of RP in Hong Kong relates to Rapid Tooling. Currently this is extremely underdeveloped in comparison with other RP user countries. It is hoped that other GARPA members can advise us on how to overcome the obstacle of introducing this feature of RP technology to industry. Governmental support for Rapid Prototyping R&D in Sweden By Brent Holmer IVF Generally, most of the support for academic research is channelled through either the regular technical university system or through a couple of Research foundations. None of these has put any money into RP, which means that the academic research in the field is almost non-existent. Still, rapid prototyping is a favoured area for governmental support, but on a very small scale. Compared to fields like microelectronics and biotechnology, manufacturing technology in general has received a small part of the total support for R&D. As part of modern manufacturing, RP has aroused enough interest to be able to snatch some support for industrial development from the ”NUTEK” governmental authority (the name NUTEK is composed of the initials of a dull official name but is pronounced NewTech). The main role of NUTEK is to stimulate technical development in small and medium-sized enterprises - the big companies are supposed to and do manage on their own. NUTEK has supported RP projects since 1992 on the total level of 4 - 800 k$ per year. The main part has been industrial projects run by IVF in co-operation with a group of companies with the aim of developing RP methodology. These projects are required to be financed at least half by industry, which means that the figure above is at least doubled. An example of such a project is to develop efficient methods for manufacture of die cast moulds based mainly on existing technology. Another example is support in the early development stages of a new RP process based on plasma welding, being developed by an innovation company and which may be commercialised soon. NUTEK has also for several years supported the networking activities of IVF resulting in the Swedish Industrial Network on FFF. Some participation in international projects is also taking place. Presently Swedish companies and IVF are active in three development projects and one thematic network financed by the European Community. One of these development projects is actually part of the global Intelligent Manufacturing Systems (IMS) initiative Obstacles to RP in Italy By Gabriella Marinsek Italian Rapid Prototyping Association Italy is historically one of the most active countries worldwide in pattern and mold fabrication. Except for some large companies, where dies of large dimensions and importance are produced, thousands of small/medium enterprises cover the whole national territory with a higher concentration in North Italy. They form a capillary network that is able to react promptly at any request with high quality standards, short delivery time and good prices due to their flexible organization and skill. The interest of these Italian companies in RP was high since the first industrial introduction of the technologies (namely around 1990). However, some factors are the limitation of achievable material properties, the low accuracy, especially for large objects, the cost of the RP systems and the lack of a national efficient maintenance/distribution organization. These factors have prevented new investments in RP. Still, the improvements related to RP processes and materials make the RP techniques attractive at least as an integration to the conventional manufacturing. In fact, the most successful companies, in terms of quality of prototypes produced and revenue, are those that have proven experience in patterns/dies and conventional machining capabilities. Following this trend, it is expected that RP will have a constant growth in the field of rapid tooling. News from the Italian Rapid Prototyping Association The Italian Association of Rapid Prototyping, APRI, focuses its activities in the diffusion of rapid prototyping know-how. This year, APRI had a booth in four main exhibitions in Italy, including the CAD/CAM Show organized by Publitec in March, Model Form Metal Form organized by Expo 2000, Eurostampi organized by Tecniche Nuove & UCISAP in April, and BIMU (Biannual Machine-tool Show) in October. Daily in each booth, there were presentations given by APRI partners representing RP producers, service bureaus, industrial users, and academia. APRI will continue to participate in exhibitions, as well as concentrate on workshops dealing with specific RP themes. It also plans to enhance its website http://www.apri-rapid.it/ . [close]