Putting a Spin on Rapid Prototyping

Bringing a new product to market can often be a costly and time-consuming process, with each new product demanding a significant investment in the design and prototype stages, before production can begin in earnest and volume sales realized.

Using rapid prototyping, the time taken to complete these tasks can be reduced significantly. In many cases, however, systems such as 3D printing machines are generally unable to produce the component in the actual material to be used in production. In addition, in certain instances, the systems and technologies can require secondary machining operations to achieve the required surface finish or remove supporting structures.

Combining the benefits of rapid prototyping with the ability to produce fully functional components in almost any material are the key attributes of the Cybaman Digital Manufacturing System. At the heart of this 6-axis machine is a patented 3-axis workpiece manipulation system invented by the company’s founder, Joe McLean. This, combined with three Cartesian axes, enables the workpiece to be manipulated in 3D around the process tool.

The main advantage of this unusual approach, is the unprecedented access to every facet of the work-piece, meaning that a component can be produced in a single set up without the need for re-setting or fixturing changes.

Imagine machining a golf ball on a tee and you have a clear perspective of the capabilities of this system. The unique reference datum within the machine, created at the intersection of its rotary axes, provides a real world 3D datum, which emulates the datum point in the virtual CAD world. The machine’s software, which runs within a CAD package and forms the front end of the manufacturing system, is used to manipulate the workpiece in 3D space simply by moving its virtual model in CAD in either a point-to-point mode or continuous 3D path presentation sequences.
 

Packing a Punch
The ability of the Cybaman Digital Manufacturing System to realize functional precision components provides distinct advantages with significant savings in time, and at a fraction of the capital equipment cost of alternative production methods.

The machine, with its compact footprint of only 800mm x 760mm, offers a surprisingly large 250mm3 cube work envelope. The compact size, and the ability to run the machine from a 240V single-phase supply, mean that the machine is equally at home in the design office or a full-fledged production environment.

A 50,000rpm high frequency water cooled spindle provides the power to machine a variety of materials including steel, aluminum, titanium, nickel-based alloys, platinum, brass, gold, silver, wood, and plastics to micron accuracies. The option of a 6-, 12- or 18-station tool changer system makes it possible to produce complex and intricate components while maintaining machining efficiency.

Add, Subtract
Although the initial concept for the Cybaman Digital Manufacturing System centered on subtractive machining methods, developments that are more recent include the integration of laser technology and laser direct metal deposition. This additive technique, employing layer-by-layer laser fused metal deposition, enables the Cybaman system to produce real components directly from their computer model. These components feature functional properties that have been shown to be largely equivalent to conventionally-produced wrought and cast alloys.

A fundamental part of the process when building 3D fully dense metallic parts is to ensure that the metal is deposited in sympathy with the force of gravity i.e. always down hand. The Cybaman manipulator and its positioning control software have been developed to continually present the initial metal foundation deposit to receive secondary layered deposits of molten metal at continually changing orientations. This has the effect of preventing the weld melt – running to earth – and facilitates the generation of 3D sculptured surface shaped components.

The overall concept behind this laser direct metal deposition development is to provide the capability to cast rapidly a near-net-shaped part, in high performance alloys directly from the CAD model, and then finish machine the surface of the resulting casting. The build materials used so far have been cobalt alloys, stainless steel, nickel alloys, and titanium. Compared to other milling machines and rapid prototyping systems, this variant of the Cybaman Digital Manufacturing System provides the ability to create parts directly, in any common prototyping material or enduse metal. The system then finishes the parts to a standard, which is still very rare within the rapid prototyping industry.

The Cybaman machine is also capable of reverse engineering. The system is not just a manufacturing tool but may also be used as design aid, to rapidly import 3D component shape data directly into CAD and save time in designing complex 3D parts. This is achieved using a laser line-scan camera that has been integrated into the machine, which uses the 3D datum at its focal plane. Any object placed upon the machine’s table will assume the datum of the table, and therefore point cloud data of the object may be captured and imported directly into CAD in the view-plane from which it is gathered. Any view plane may be addressed, with the control software always knowing to which view plane it relates. In this way, a number of different views of an object are imported into CAD and easily stitched together, since all have the same relationship to both the table’s datum and the CAD Cartesian datum.

The dedication and innovation of the team at Cybaman Technologies has produced a flexible and futuristic system, capable of producing high quality rapid prototype parts in production materials using either subtractive or additive processes. With existing installations in several different industries, and the machine’s capability to operate either as a prototyping or production system, the Cybaman Digital Manufacturing System looks to take advantage of the growing acceptance of rapid manufacturing methods.

Cybaman Technologies
Cheshire, United Kingdom
cybamantech.co.uk