A concurrent Rapid Manufacturing advice system

This paper assesses the possibility of using Rapid Manufacturing (RM) as a final manufacturing route through a comparison of RM processes capabilities vs. conventional manufacturing processes. This is done by means of a computer-aided system intended to guide the designer in the selection of optimum production parameters according to typical requirements of the first design stages. A number of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools are applied namely: fuzzy inference, relational databases and rule-based decision making. A pilot application developed in Matlab (R) is presented to illustrate a case study for a real mechanical part. Along the article it is shown how the proposed model may be useful for presenting feasible RM alternatives for parts and products not originally intended for additive manufacture.