The proposed study is concerned with a one-step direct process to fabricate three-dimensional parts using a laser beam. This process is referred to as the Laser-Aided Direct Rapid Prototyping (LADRP). Laser light can melt and/or vaporize virtually any material and laser tooling leads to the unification of various conventional tools because a laser beam can be used to carry out many different machining operations such as cutting, drilling, welding and milling. Such process integration is very important for the rapid production of three- dimensional parts directly in near net shape. The success of the proposed rapid prototyping process depends on the development of systematic design methodologies and developing suitable digital interfaces between design and manufacturing. The proposed research will carry out experimental studies and develop mathematical models for the LADRP process, and will develop design rule characterization of the LADRP process so that lower- level CAD tools for process planning simulation and verification may be implemented. A layered description language will be developed that can generate the slices of 2.5 D layers for the part from an input file specified in some higher level description language such as the STL or ACIS format.
