Ed,

Dear AG:

Thanks for your message. I have made a few comments in-line:

Currently, the company is involved in a steel manufacturing business with its market in India, Middle East, Europe and US. Two years back, I took over the initiative of exploring emerging markets. We have been closely watching the RP market for last two year. We believe this is the right time to enter this market and make our way into Rapid Manufacturing as it becomes an accepted practice in the market. Working on similar lines, we are exploring various applications possible and decide the right entry point.

The company has its primary manufacturing base in India and also wants to start this project in India. The unique economic balance in developing countries like India changes the benefit analysis of RP technology. There is no doubt that there exists a strong business case for a RP project in India. I am confident that the dynamics of Indian market will make this project suitable for international market. As I understand, there exists a market of service providers in India but to my knowledge, there are not many companies who are fully using this technology to deliver end customer products.

***EG: I don't know of any rapid manufacturing projects in India, either. But then, there are still very few in the rest of the world. The most critical thing is to choose a product area where there is an overwhelming advantage in using additive fabrication and one which can live within today's technical limitations. This is a good time to begin thinking about this, however, since this is a field still basically in its infancy.

Looking at your website, it seems that you may be able to help us. We are specifically looking for assistance or guidance in analyzing the various applications possible using RP as RM and the financial viability of the process for those applications. There are many later stages to complete the business case but these are few of our first steps.

Any form of guidance/assistance from you will be highly appreciated. Please let me know and I will be happy to discuss this further with you.

***EG: I would suggest that your first step would be to assess the state of the art. There is an excellent, fairly-recent, article by Phil Dickens of Loughborough University which you should be able to find in our Digest section. Use the red button at the top of our home page to get to that section quickly and look under "rapid tooling and manufacturing." The title of the article is "Industrial Revolution Rapid Approaching."

[NOTE: This article is no longer in the Digest because the publisher’s web-site is no longer free. Try searching Google for the title, or see our RM section.]

This article is probably as complete a review as exists at the moment. My own estimate is that the field will evolve rather more slowly than people expect, with particular applications being uncovered one at a time. It's important to try to find high value-added applications for the technology, even in India, I'd say. That's why most of the existing applications today are in aerospace, medicine and similar fields.

Thanks again for your letter and we send best regards.

Ed

Ed Grenda
Castle Island Co.
The Worldwide Guide to Rapid Prototyping

Ed,