Innovative economic process for the Rapid Prototyping of near net shape metal and ceramic parts

Many errors which occur in the design of new products are often detected lately. This induces high modification costs and a prolonging of the time needed for the whole development process. Due to this fact different prototyping techniques are used to detect errors earlier but usually conventional prototyping methods are time consuming and therefore avoided. In order to fulfill the demand for the fast production of especially metallic and ceramic prototypes for functional applications and testing the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Materials Research (IFAM) and the Fraunhofer institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation (IPA) started activities in the area of Rapid Prototyping more than four years ago. The idea was to find a technique which allows the production of prototypes with a high variability of materials like plastics, ceramics and metals. According to our experiences we developed and patented a new process named Multiphase Jet Solidification (MJS) able to produce met allic (e.g. stainless steel) and ceramic (e.g. SiC) parts for functional applications. With this new technique near net shape components can be produced rapidly.