Printing in Three Dimensions printing in three dimensions Office printers that produce designs rapidly as solid objects reduce the time from thought to reality. Wescast, based in Wingham, Ontario, makes exhaust manifolds for automobiles and light trucks by pouring iron into sand molds. The company designs the manifolds on a CAD system and then puts them through a rigorous analysis, using computer-aided tools that test for strength and manufacturability. After analysis, Wescast used to produce a handmade prototype for physical testing. But the company found that it needed to shorten that cycle.
Suppliers are uniquely beholden, after all, to the customers whose parts they design.
Frequently, the automotive companies would request that Wescast make a change to the exhaust design after it had already reached the prototype stage. Obviously, the company found it expensive to trash the prototype and restart the process from scratch. This process, sometimes called fused deposition modeling, is comparable to the rapid prototyping done on larger machines. The 3-D printers can be situated in an office, according to Fish. Employees don't need to take special precautions around the starch-based printing materials that his company's printer uses.