Shape Deposition Manufacturing of Heterogeneous Structures

Abstract

To date, the most widely recognized advantage of the layered manufacturing methodology is the relative ease of automatically planning and executing the fabrication of complex geometric shapes. But building shapes using selective material-additive processes has a second, far-reaching advantage - the creation of heterogeneous structures composed of multimaterial regions and with prefabricated devices embedded into the structure. The capability to fabricate heterogeneous structures is important because it enables the realization of new, complex designs. Shape deposition manufacturing, a layered manufacturing process described in this paper, addresses how to build multimaterial, embedded structures such as advanced tooling and embedded electronic devices.