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Original Date: 04/28/1995
Revision Date: 01/18/2007
Information : Rapid Prototyping
Lockheed Martin Electronics and Missiles (E&M) uses a stereolithography apparatus (SLA) system in its rapid prototyping efforts. The company maintains both SLA 250 and SLA 500 devices. Manufacturing of models by the SLA process allows for quick turnaround of a hard copy from engineering three-dimensional databases. The SLA process eliminates costly tooling and machining processes and allows for early design reviews of new products or proof-out of product concepts. With the use of SLA models, an engineer can easily improve the product design by going through more iterations before committing the design to production. Some of the additional benefits of this process are reduced design errors, more producible parts, assembly validation, numerical control program validation, rapid acquisition of castings, and improved communication between engineering, manufacturing, vendors, and customers.
Because today’s business environment requires production companies to increasingly shorten their product design and development times and to shorten their overall time to market for new products, Lockheed Martin is successfully applying SLA to its quick turnaround manufacturing processes (MPs).
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