The Rapid Prototyping
Patent Museum

1. Historically important

Many of the early inventors both described means of gathering data - what we would today call reverse engineering - as well as the creation of the replica or object. In the 1970’s, a series of patents to Paul DiMatteo and others, and assigned to Dynell Electronics covered this range of technology, as well. The thrust of the business was to build a service for producing life-like portrait busts. Multi-camera photographic methods were used to generate the data for CNC machining-based rapid prototyping. The company garnered some national media coverage, but not much seems to have come of it business-wise.

Numerous patents were also issued in the 1970’s to inventor Wyn Swainson and others, and assigned to the Formigraphic Engine Corp., describing an early effort to utilize photopolymer materials. The technology was under development by the Battelle Memorial Institute for a number of years before finally being abandoned. Battelle was trying to replicate in three dimensions the success they had had in two dimensions by taking a technology upstart, namely Haloid Corporation, and turning it into Xerox. Regrettably, they were not to experience the same good fortune with Formigraphic.

While the technology used scanned lasers and photopolymers, much like stereolithography, the process was more complex. The object was formed within a vat of photopolymer at the intersection of two individual lasers scanned from right angles through windows in the vat walls. Each of these lasers were of different colors and the photopolymer was designed to solidify only where they intersected in the x-y plane. Aside from the obvious complexity of materials design, the method suffered from the appreciable attenuation and optical distortion experienced by the laser beams as they traveled variable distances though the photopolymer. Contrast this situation with stereolithography, which advantageously keeps a well-controlled beam on the surface of the vat.

Formigraphic’s technology lives on, however, in methods of making micro- and nanoscale parts that use two photon absorption. The small size of these parts avoids the laser problems experienced at macro scales.

Ross Housholder’s patent was another prescient publication that anticipated much of what was to come. Although nominally it bears the closest resemblance to selective laser sintering, it also describes aspects of fused deposition modeling and stereolithography. The assignee was HiCo Western Products, a company that still exists and in which the Housholder family remains involved. HiCo now provides ingredients for barbecue cooking. Perhaps it always did - someone should look into this - but in 1981 Mr. Housholder was one of the first people thinking about applications ranging from toolless ceramic molding to the creation of 3D hard-copy models for medical CT scans and the like.

Year	US Patent No.	Title	Inventor	Assignee or Resulting Commercial Entity	Technology Area
1. Historically important
1892	0473901	Manufacture of contour relief maps	Blanther; J.E.	None	-
1902	0774549	Photographic process for the production of plastic objects	Baese; Carlo	None	-
1956	2775758	Photo-Glyph Recording	Munz, Otto John	none	-
1976	3932923	Method of generating and constructing three-dimensional bodies	DiMatteo; Paul L.	Dynell Electronics Corporation	reverse engineering and CNC RP
1977	4041476	Method, medium and apparatus for producing three-dimensional figure product	Swainson; Wyn Kelly .	Formigraphic Engine Corporation	stereolithography variant and predecessor
1981	4247508	Molding process	Housholder; Ross F.	Hico Western Products Co. .	predecessor to selective laser sintering (SLS) and RP in general
1982	4323756	Method for fabricating articles by sequential layer deposition	Brown; Clyde O. ; Breinan; Edward M. ; Kear; Bernard H.	United Technologies Corporation	weld deposition
Year	US Patent No.	Title	Inventor	Assignee or Resulting Commercial Entity	Technology Area

Use the Prev | Next links provided on each page to proceed sequentially through the entire patent list, although not precisely in the order the entries appear in the table. Links provided in the "Technology Area" column will take you to pages within the WWGRP site that either briefly explain the method, or to directory listings or archived materials where more information can be found. You can also use the site search function and main index to uncover additional information.