Rapid prototyping of functional metallic parts

Reducing the time to produce prototypes is a key to speeding up the development of new products. Today's commercially available rapid prototyping systems work with different techniques using paper, polymers and waxes. One big goal in the field of rapid prototyping (e.g. in the automotive industry) is the production of metallic prototypes for functional applications and testing. One possibility to produce metal parts is a two-step process (production of wax prototypes, e.g. with the fused deposition modeling (FDM) process and subsequently investment casting). The FDM system is installed since March 93 at the Fraunhofer-Institute for Applied Materials Research (IFAM). Another possibility is the direct manufacturing of metallic components (e.g. stainless steel). A new rapid prototyping process which we name ''multiphase jet solidification'' (MJS) is used for this task. Experiences and results with these two techniques are presented.