The RP Digest
Rapid Prototyping Articles Available on the Web

Popular TV series CSI:NY turns to RP to model a bullet that killed a police officer. Author: anon. Cadalyst, Jan 15, 2005. Z Corp.'s three dimensional printing process is combined with reverse engineering to examine a bullet not able to be removed from the policeman's horse without endangering the horse's life. RP is still whizz-bang for the public after all these years.

Laser Builds Tiny Structures on Human Hair. Author:Gabe Romain. Betterhumans.com, May 5, 2004. Using multiphoton-absorption photopolymerization (MAP), researchers at Boston College fabricated structures 1,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair, right on top of a hair, without damaging it. The technology could eventually build devices inside living cells.

Micron-sized tools are driven by light. Author: John Wallace. Laser Focus World, March 2003. [Requires free registration.] The article discusses that microscopic tools permit intricate manipulations of small objects. The tools contain fixed and moving parts and are fabricated using a two-photon stereolithographic process. A set of tweezers was formed in six minutes, with the tools' fine points fabricated by point-by-point exposure.

Lasers Sculpt World's Smallest Bull. Author: Sally Cole Cederquist. Laser Focus World, October, 2001. Osaka University researchers sculpted a bull roughly the size of a single red blood cell, 10 by 7 microns, using two infrared laser beams and a resin that solidifies only where the lasers cross. The research team, led by Satoshi Kawata, demonstrated that two-photon photopolymerization makes it possible to exceed the diffraction limit by nonlinear effects to give a subdiffraction-limit spatial resolution of 120 nm.

Atom Optics Technologies Could Be Phenomenal... Lori Stiles provides a thought-provoking article describing the work of University of Arizona scientist Pierre Meystre. Atom optics reverses the roles of matter and light - it uses laser light to direct and manipulate beams of atoms, or "matter waves." One long-term possibility is "atom holography." Instead of making an image in light as done in conventional holography, atom optics would make the hologram of atoms. "What this means is, we could make a real, 3-dimensional replica of some object. We could copy objects," Meystre said. Dated Feb 1, 2001.

Next, the Copier Will Reproduce Popsicles. Author: Fenella Saunders. Discover, October 2000. (Link is to a copy of the article on the FindArticles web-site.) A description of the University of Missouri's Rapid Freeze Prototyping which uses ice to form objects. Some potential advantages are low-cost, high-speeds and the possibility of color.

Laser Direct Writing Builds Biostructures. Author: Douglas Chrisey. Laser Focus World, September, 2000. A pulsed UV laser writes thin-film CAD patterns and arrays of high-quality crystalline materials on delicate substrates. Matrix-assisted pulsed-laser-evaporation direct write (MAPLE DW) simplifies the fabrication of high-quality mesoscale electronic components and biostructures. This technique has possible applications ranging from electroluminescent displays to the direct writing of biomaterials for tissue engineering and array-based biosensors.

A droid for all seasons. New Scientist, May 13, 2000. This is a description of polymorphic robot research at Brandeis University. Given a task to optimize, robots spawn generations of offspring that self-replicate and are species selected for improved performance of the task. Fused deposition modeling RP is used to fabricate the robots and humans only intervene to add motors or wires. If this makes you worry about the future, it is perhaps comforting to remember that mankind will retain the ability to yank a plug out of a wall socket for an indefinite period into the future. [Article is in pdf format.)