General Catalog 2023-24

Lecture, four hours; laboratory, two hours; outside study, six hours. Enforced requisite: course 183A. Rapid prototyping (RP), solid freeform fabrication, or additive manufacturing has emerged as popular manufacturing technology to accelerate product creation in last two decades. Machine for layered manufacturing builds parts directly from CAD models. This novel manufacturing technology enables building of parts that have traditionally been impossible to fabricate because of their complex shapes or of variety in materials. In analogy to speed and flexibility of desktop publishing, rapid prototyping is also called desktop manufacturing, with actual three-dimensional solid objects instead of mere two-dimensional images. Methodology of rapid prototyping has also been extended into meso-/micro-/nano-scale to produce three-dimensional functional miniature components. Concurrently scheduled with course C297A. Letter grading.