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This review paper aims to provide an overview of applications of direct rapid manufacturing assisted mold with conformal cooling channels (CCCs) and shows the potential of this technique in different manufacturing processes.

Key publications from the past two decades have been reviewed.

This study concludes that direct rapid manufacturing technique plays a dominant role in the manufacturing of mold with complicated CCC structure which helps to improve the quality of final part and productivity. The outcome based on literature review and case study strongly suggested that in the near future direct rapid manufacturing method might become standard procedure in various manufacturing processes for fabrication of complex CCCs in the mold.

Advanced techniques such as computer-aided design, computer-aided engineering simulation and direct rapid manufacturing made it possible to easily fabricate the effective CCC in the mold in various manufacturing processes.

This paper is beneficial to study the direct rapid manufacturing technique for development of the mold with CCC and its applications in different manufacturing processes.

To propose a method to manufacture a hybrid rapid tool (a multi component tool).

The part is decomposed into multi component prototype instead of a part made from a single piece. First, this method is based on a topological analysis of the tool. Features are regrouped starting from the numerical definition of the die. Second, the manufacturing possibilities of the high speed milling (HSM), direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) and electro discharge machining (EDM) process are analyzed. Finally this information is synthesized to obtain solutions. This method is validated by industrial example.

A method is proposed to choose the best manufacturing process in order to optimize the manufacture of a “hybrid rapid tooling” between three processes: HSM, DMLS and EDM. So, it is possible to obtain the different components of the hybrid rapid tooling according to the envisaged process.

The final goal is to propose a software assistant used in association with CAD system during the design of hybrid rapid tooling. An important work concerning the features recognition must be implemented. The assembly of the different parts of the hybrid rapid tooling must be considered and optimized.

This method allows the selection of the best process among EDM, HSM and DMLS technologies form manufacturing tools.

The analysis of manufacturing hybrid rapid tooling has not been studied yet.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact that slow growth in staple food productivity can have on the process of structural change and, more importantly, on the development of labor intensive industry.

A theory of a semi-open economy is developed to analyze the role of staple food productivity on structural change. A case study is used to illustrate the workings of the model.

Slow growth in food staple productivity will mean that even when labor is physically abundant, it will not be economically cheap. Thus it will be extremely difficult to promote the expansion of labor intensive manufacturing. The key to rapid structural change is rapid growth in food staple productivity.

Investment in raising agricultural productivity is critical in the development of labor intensive manufacturing.

Rapid growth can occur without leading to structural change. The bulk of the population remains locked in the rural sector.

The food sector is shown to be largely non-tradable. As a result solving the food problem domestically is crucial for structural change and economic development. Labor intensive manufacturing needs relatively cheap labor. For labor to be cheap, agricultural productivity (food staples) must rise rapidly.

Additive manufacturing has achieved rapid development in recent years. The purpose of this paper is to visualize the intellectual landscapes of additive manufacturing and identify the hotspots and emerging trends of additive manufacturing, which can provide references for scholars, enterprises and governments to promote the development of theory and practice in the additive manufacturing field.

Science mapping is a fast-growing interdisciplinary field originated in information science and technology. Based on this methodology, guided by a computational approach, the paper visualizes the co-occurring keywords network and co-citation references network by CiteSpaceIII software to explore the hotspots and emerging trends of additive manufacturing by the following five indicators: highly cited keywords, burst keywords, clusters, landmark references and burst references.

“Additive manufacturing,” “3D printing,” “3D powder printing,” “consolidation phenomena,” “microstructure,” “rapid prototyping,” etc., are the main hotspots of additive manufacturing. The trends of additive manufacturing generally consist of three stages: the fundamental concepts stage from 1995 to 2000 (“rapid prototyping,” “additive manufacturing,” etc.), the approaches and techniques applications stage from 2001 to 2010 (“stereolithography,” “scaffold,” etc.), and the emerging trends stage from 2011 to the present (“stem cell”, “selective laser,” “ti-6al-4v,” etc.). The research is most abundant in 2010 and 2012. The medical field is an important hotspot of additive manufacturing. Additive manufacturing has been researched in interdiscipline.

The paper maps the perspective of additive manufacturing and explore the hotspots and emerging trends of additive manufacturing.

Rapid manufacturing processes provide designers, mechanical and process engineers with a lot of chances and opportunities. It is necessary to show them, how their work and their processes will change due to these new technologies.

Rapid manufacturing offers the chance to use the additive manufacturing processes to produce not just prototypes but advanced functional parts in small and medium quantities that can utilise a lot of design advantages that are provided by the process. We consult, as a German applied research institute, independent companies, helping them to introduce new product development and manufacturing processes, rethink the design of their products and to be aware of the advantages of upcoming manufacturing technologies.

Finds that a lot of products of today and especially of tomorrow could be produced by the new rapid manufacturing processes today and at competitive costs, if their design was adapted carefully using the new possibilities. New categories of products will come up too.

The acceptance of rapid manufacturing as a new production technology is still limited by the available manufacturing systems. The number of released materials is still small and the accuracy of the parts and the building speed is still not exactly rapid. The mindset of the decision makers and of the R&D departments has to be radically changed. There is a lot of development going on, so the situation will change…

Aspects of a visionary scenario for future productions and products are shown and some examples are demonstrated based on a customised robot gripper.

To provide an innovative way for manufacturing in which the integration of rapid technologies is simultaneously used methodologically in real‐time for the rapid product and process development (RPPD).

A range of related works are discussed and an experimental implementation of the RPPD methodology is described for composite functional prototype design and rapid manufacturing (RM). The simultaneous integration of VP/RP/RT/RE/RM technologies consolidates a powerful methodology to achieve the RPPD objectives.

The RPPD developed methodology takes advantage of both virtual prototyping (VP) and physical prototypes made by rapid prototyping (RP) technology to evaluate performances and design ergonomic aspects. The increasing needs to reduce lead‐time and costs have direct converting RP in rapid tooling (RT) technology for RM. Furthermore, to verify the parts and tools geometry accuracy the simultaneous use of scanning techniques for metrology control aided by reverse engineering (RE) as allow decreasing the RPPD time.

This paper evaluated RPPD results and the metrology control plotted in error distribution function and cumulative error distribution histograms validate the best practice developed that industrial manufacturers could implement allowing time and costs reductions.

The purpose of this paper is to review additive and/or subtractive manufacturing methods for metallic objects and their gradual evolution from prototyping tools to rapid manufacture of actual parts.

Various existing rapid manufacturing (RM) methods have been classified into six groups, namely, CNC machining laminated manufacturing, powder‐bed technologies, deposition technologies, hybrid technologies and rapid casting technologies and discussed in detail. The RM methods have been further classified, based on criteria such as material, raw material form, energy source, etc. The process capabilities springing from these classifications are captured in the form of a table, which acts as a database.

Due to the approximation in RM in exchange for total automation, a variety of multi‐faceted and hybrid approaches has to be adopted. This study helps in choosing the appropriate RM process among these myriad technologies.

This review facilitates identification of appropriate RM process for a given situation and sets the framework for design for RM.

To discuss integration of the rapid prototyping environmental aspects with the primary focus on electrical energy consumption.

Various manufacturing parameters have been tested on three rapid prototyping systems: Thermojet (3DS), FDM 3000 (Stratasys) and EOSINT M250 Xtended (EOS). The objective is to select sets of parameters for reduction of electrical energy consumption. For this, a part is manufactured in several orientations and positions in the chamber of these RP systems. For each test, the electrical power is noted. Finally, certain rules are proposed to minimize this electrical energy consumption during a job.

It is important to minimize the manufacturing time but there is no general rule for optimization of electrical energy consumption. Each RP system must be tested with energy consumption considerations under the spotlight.

The work is only based on rapid prototyping processes. The objective is to take into consideration the complete life‐cycle of a rapid prototyped part: manufacturing of raw material as far as reprocessing of waste.

Reduction of electrical energy consumption to complete a job.

Currently, environmental aspects are not well studied in rapid prototyping.

Introduces the concept of using technologies collectively known as rapid prototyping (RP) for the manufacture of end‐use products rather than prototypes, and presents recent examples. Gives details of a cost analysis performed by De Montfort University and Delphi Automotive Systems (France). Discusses the findings from the cost analysis along with opinions generated from an Internet based conference held from November 2000 to January 2001. The combination of findings from the cost analysis with expert opinions generated by the Internet conference have helped to identify the potential future for rapid manufacturing. In particular covers the issues of material properties, quality control and identification of suitable products.

This paper focuses on the development of a distributed rapid prototyping system via the Internet to form a framework of Internet prototyping and manufacturing for the support of effective product development. The proposed methodology is targeted at a wide audience using a disparate range of computer systems to access remotely located rapid prototyping facilities via the Internet for prototype fabrication. The methodology is useful for both educational research for teaching evolving rapid prototyping technologies and remote scientific visualization. This approach is based on the merger of object‐oriented modular software architecture and client server communications for the remote control of rapid prototyping hardware (called fused deposition modeling) via the Internet. Other Web tools are used to allow the remote user to have higher interactivity with the server applications that have a direct link with the front‐end terminals controlling the rapid prototyping hardware.