Abstract

Rapid prototyping technologies are used to produce design models, functional models or even a small set of technical prototypes in a very short time. Such prototypes help to reduce a product's “time-to-market” period. Some important industries, such as the automotive or the consumables industry, have already exploited this new technology, whereas the growing micro technology has not profited yet. This is due to current machines' low process accuracy of 0.1 mm, which limits the application to parts with normal sizes. On the other hand, taking into account the fact that the micro technology produces more complex parts, there is a large potential for the production of micro prototypes.

© 2000 IEEE