Apparatus for forming an integral object from laminations
AssigneeHelisys, Inc.
InventorsMichael Feygin, Sung S. Pak
Life of this patent
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Abstract
The present invention generally relates to manufacturing apparatus for forming an integral three-dimensional object from individually contoured laminations of the same or gradually varying shape, successive laminae of that object being produced out of thin sheet or powder based materials through the cutting, fusing or physicochemical property changing action generated by a computer directed beam of concentrated energy or matter, successive substantially planar laminations of that object being automatically stacked together for step-wise laminar buildup of the desired three-dimensional object.
Claims35
A method of converting sheet material into a three-dimensional object comprised of a plurality of slices, including the steps of:
- positioning a layer of said sheet material over a work station;
- bonding said layer to an adjacent layer of sheet material to result in a bonded layer using a bonding tool movably mounted over the work station;
- forming a slice in said layer using a forming tool movably mounted over the work station, portions of said layer not defining part of said slice being unwanted;
- and
- forming lines in said unwanted portions with said forming tool to facilitate removal of said unwanted portions after said three-dimensional object is formed, said lines in said unwanted portions closer to the edges of said slice being spaced closer together than the lines farther from the edges of said slice.
A method of converting layers of material into a three-dimensional object comprised of a plurality of slices of said material, including the steps of:
- positioning a layer of said sheet material over a work station on which a plurality of layers have been previously positioned and bonded together to form a stack;
- bonding said layer to said stack;
- defining edges of a slice in said layer bonded to said stack using a forming tool movably mounted over the work station, portions of said layer not defining part of said slice being unwanted;
- and
- heating only said unwanted portions of said layer sufficiently to weaken the bonds between the unwanted portions and an adjacent layer in said stack to facilitate removal of said unwanted portions after said three-dimensional object is formed.
A method of converting layers of material into a three-dimensional object comprised of a plurality of slices of said material, including the steps of:
- positioning a layer of said sheet material over a work station on which a plurality of layers have been previously positioned and bonded together to form a stack;
- bonding said layer to said stack;
- defining edges of a slice in said layer bonded to said stack using a forming tool movably mounted over the work station, portions of said layer not defining part of said slice being unwanted;
- and
- burning said unwanted portions to form an indentation and prevent unwanted portions in subsequent layers from bonding to said stack.
A method of converting layers of sheet material into a three-dimensional object comprised of a plurality of slices of said material, including the steps of:
- defining a slice in a layer of said sheet material;
- positioning said layer of said sheet material over a work station on which a plurality of layers have been previously positioned and bonded together to form a stack;
- weakly bonding said layer to said stack;
- strongly bonding regions of said layer of said sheet material forming said slice to said stack using a forming tool movably mounted over said work station, without strongly bonding portions of said layer not defining part of said slice to said stack to facilitate removal of said portions;
- and
- disconnecting said slice from said layer using said forming tool.
A laminated object manufacturing system for forming material into a three-dimensional object comprised of a plurality of layers of said material, comprising:
- a handling mechanism for supplying the material to a work stage, the work stage adapted to position said material;
- a forming tool mounted to move relative to said work stage to form said layers from the material;
- a bonding tool mounted to move relative to said work stage to apply force and bond adjacent layers of material to each other,
- a sensor mounted to sense the force applied by said bonding tool to the material during bonding of said adjacent layers;
- and
- a controller which regulates the relative position of said bonding tool and said work stage in accordance with the force sensed by said sensor.
A laminated object manufacturing system for forming material into a three-dimensional object comprised of a stack of slices of the material, comprising:
- a work stage adapted to position said stack;
- a handling mechanism for supplying incremental layers of material to the work stage;
- a forming tool mounted to move relative to said work stage to shape said slices from said incremental layers of material;
- a sensor mounted to sense the height of said stack on said work stage;
- and
- a controller which receives input from said sensor and divides the height of the stack by the number of layers previously placed on said stack to obtain an average layer height and predict the height of the next layer, and outputs information to said forming tool regarding the shape of the next slice based on the stack height and a predicted next layer height.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.