Study On Manufacturing Of Computer Monitor Stand Based On Reverse Engineering (RE) And Rapid Prototyping (RP) Techniques

Reverse Engineering (RE) and Rapid Prototyping (RP) techniques have attracted much attention in manufacturing and academia, which have been widely used in development and design of new products since the manufacturing has taken on a new look with the popularization of these techniques. RE and RP techniques start from size measurement and data processing of material surface, on this basis the CAD model is reconstructed by combination of novel concept on design, and then rapid prototyping experiments are repeatedly performed and assessed until an optimum design scheme is achieved. This process can not only lessen mistakes of product design and underlie subsequent production but significantly shorten the development cycle and decrease the development cost of new products. Therefore, the enterprise can give a rapid response to market demand, which is liable to further promote the market competitiveness of products and integrated competition ability of corporations.In this study, the concept of RE/RP techniques, the scope of application and the research status at home and abroad are expounded, the framework of integration system based on RE/RP techniques at this stage are discussed, and the advantages and limitations of different integration types are highlighted. On this basis, rapid prototyping and CAD techniques are combined to design and fabricate complex thin- walled part - computer monitor stand, and some preliminary approaches are developed to address part of key technologies on manufacture of thin-walled part via rapid prototyping techniques. The main research contents and results are summarized as follows. First, the computer monitor stand is listed as a research object, the key technology and related theories of RE/RP systems are investigated, and various relevant technologies and processing methods are compared. Taking into account of the features of this research and existed equipments, the integration mode based on RE/RP systems is chosen as the ideal mode, and then the framework of the integrated system is constructed.Second, the equipments and basic methods of data collection in reverse engineering are introduced, and data acquisition for the computer monitor stand is obtained by contact mode using three coordinate measuring machine (CMM) and vernier calliper. On this basis, the Pro/Engineer software is used to reconstruct the CAD model. In addition, major methods to reconstruct model are highlighted.Third, taking into account of the characteristics of the computer monitor stand and the existed rapid prototyping equipments in laboratory, appropriate rapid prototyping process is used to perform the rapid prototyping manufacture via melted extrusion modeling (MEM). The rapid prototyping steps and processes of the base, the selection principle of model forming direction and basic theory on setting parameters are discussed in detail, and the rapid prototyping and manufacturing of the target product are achieved.Last, some phenomena such as appearance of gaps and stiles during melted extrusion modeling are summarized, and some efficient approaches to address these problems are proposed. The methods to avoid gaps primarily contain hybrid repair using baby powder and CA-50 gel and optimized parameter setting. Some methods such as using needle files and water proof abrasive paper, lessening the layer thickness and making a surface normal direction close to the table in the horizontal direction can be utilized to attain small step effect.The progress of this study affords some efficient approaches to set and optimum parameters and important methods to address key techniques on rapid prototyping and manufacturing of new products, and thus it is of great importance to promote the further development of manufacturing.