Web-based rapid prototyping and manufacturing systems: A review

Rapid prototyping and manufacturing (RP&M) technique has shown a high potential to reduce the cycle and cost of product development, and has been considered as one of crucial enabling tools in digital manufacturing to effectively aid rapid product development. Manufacturing industry is evolving toward digitalization, network and globalization. The Internet, incorporating computers and multimedia, has provided tremendous potential for remote integration and collaboration in business and manufacturing applications. RP&M technique using the Internet can further enhance the design and manufacturing productivity, speed, and economy, as well as share the RP machines. Web-based RP&M systems have been developed and employed to implement remote service and manufacturing for rapid prototyping, enhance the availability of RP&M facilities and improve the capability of rapid product development for a large number of small and medium sized enterprises. This paper provides a comprehensive review of recent research on Web-based RP&M systems. Various architectures proposed for Web-based RP&M systems are presented. Furthermore, some key issues and enabling tools to implement the remote RP&M systems, which involve (1) RP&M process selection, (2) RP price quotation, (3) STL Viewer, (4) RP data pre-processing, (5) job planning and scheduling, (6) remote control and monitoring for RP machines, (7) security management, (8) applying new technologies and concepts to the systems, are described in detail. Finally, this review gives an outlook on possible future development and research direction for Web-based RP&M systems.