Advanced manufacturing technologies Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Advanced manufacturing technologies - Article Example Due to increased advancement in technology in various fields such as electronics, and medicine among others manufacturing engineers have advanced their techniques to cater for increasing demand in these other fields of technology.The complexities in manufacturing of parts required by the technologists in specialties such as medicine has necessitated development of various advanced manufacturing techniques. This paper seeks to outline Layered Manufacturing Technology (LM), Rapid Prototyping (RP) and other techniques used in advanced manufacturing technology in details. It will also establish the correlation between the technology and medicine; that is the use of the technology in manufacture of implants. Lastly the paper will discuss the details of reverse engineering technology as applied in Computer Aided Design (CAD).Advanced manufacturing technology is aspect of advancement in manufacturing technology that enables development of composites and composite materials that are benefici al to manufactures in the market. On the other hand it enhances productivity, efficiency and excellent quality of products manufactured. There are various aspects in the place of advanced manufacturing technology, which include Layered Manufacturing Technology, Computer Numerical Control among others.The Layered manufacturing technology has proved to be very diverse and in application and more so in the field of medicine. This technology though easy to implement since it does not require he contemporary tools needs a very skilled and knowledgeable know-how to implement if the desired results have to be obtained. This technology constitutes of various techniques that include Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), Selective Laser Melting (SLM) and Electron Beam Melting (EBM). Layered Manufacturing Technology Layered manufacturing technology (LM) can be defined as production of solid materials in laminated form. This technology of material production can be carried out using various methods but all of them apply the same idea of principle. In the process of manufacture the three-dimension design of the object to be produced should be well described with respect to its dimension. This is then formatted to give the slice; that is the layers in terms of their definite size and numbers so that they can be assembled together to form the solid material wanted. They are several technologies that are applicable in combination of the said layers or slices in this technology to come up with a solid object, thus this technology is perceived as construction of a definite solid shape from individual building units of given size. This technology as described, has some positive aspects to the technologists employing them; that is It makes the tools, moulds or dies usage not necessary. On the other hand the technologist can easily manipulate the quality of the surface finish of the object being manufactured Although the limitation to this technology is that the rate of manufacturing objects is slower than other methods of manufacturing which uses tools, moulds or dies and depends on the method used. This method of manufacturing in perception of the basic principle can be related to the following manufacturing methods. The layers are like bricks used by masons in constructions of objects of different required shapes. Clay threads layered together to form walls that will produce an object of required shape and size in pottery. Use of slices in expressing three-dimensional landscape in cartography. The big difference between layered manufacturing technology and above practices is that the units used in t LM technology are considerably very small to the tune of 10-100 microns. LM technology was developed from Rapid Prototyping (RP) technology, which involves high-speed production of patterns that are hard to produce using