If for a moment people would stop dreaming about, waiting for, or playing with iPhones, they might put their minds to work on faster and newer manufacturing methods. One alternative to handing the work to the Chinese is to use contemporary technology in the United States to get jobs done pronto. As we have seen, some Chinese outsourcing has backfired. Witness lead-painted toy trucks, unsavory chemical additives in toothpaste, and food processing difficulties.
Alternative processes use a combination of technologies that came into being in the 1980s and 1990s and are only now seeing success. These are additive fabrication processes, such as stereolithography (SL), selective laser sintering (SLS), and fused deposition modeling (FDM), as well as computer-aided design (CAD) and online business processing.
SLS, for example, uses a laser to sinter — that is, heat and fuse, but not melt — powder-based materials. The system comprises a laser, part chamber, and control system. The part chamber, with a build platform, a powder cartridge for the material, and a leveling roller, is where the action takes place.
The process starts with a thin layer of the building material spread across the machine's platform. A laser traces a 2D cross-section pattern based on the CAD design requirements. Then the platform descends to the next layer, and the two layers are sintered together. This process of layered building goes on until the prototype part is finished. This process, in its stereolithographic form, was originally designed in the 1980s by Charles Hull.
Rapid prototyping processes now make not just single prototypes but significant runs, adding up to millions of parts yearly.
Quickparts.com Inc. provides just such a service for custom manufacturing needs. Using the SLS system, it takes 3D CAD designs via an online service and creates actual plastic or metal parts in a next-day manufacturing service.
Ronald L. Hollis, CEO and president, conceived of Quickparts as the Home Depot of custom manufactured parts for the product development market. By combining an online service with CAD tools and rapid prototyping, Quickparts offers accurate parts quickly and at a lower cost than traditional prototyping.
Hollis has also written a book, called Better Be Running: Tools to Drive Design Success (CLSI, 2007), in which he offers practical information and opinions on modern manufacturing technology. In it, he covers SL, SLS, FDM, low-tech ways to make parts, injection molding, and strategies for production plastics.
"You have to pick the technology for the purpose of the part," he writes. "My passion is building technology-based businesses and then watching others use these technologies to pursue their passion for creation."
He also weighs in on when and how to use China as a resource — and when not to do so. He quotes Napoleon on China: "Let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world." Manufacturers should heed this advice.