Rapid prototyping is becoming an increasingly important technique involved in the design cycles of modern industry. The majority of the rapid prototyping systems currently available use photo-reactive resins and waxes as the raw materials. The models produced by these systems often have relatively poor mechanical and physical properties and as such have a limited application to the production of advance prototypes but are excellently suited to the manufacture of engineering prototypes.
This work identifies the need to produce near production grade advance prototypes from a variety of metals and a novel prototyping process based on the techniques of laser surface cladding and conventional metal machining is proposed. The integration of a carbon dioxide laser and a conventional machine tool to create the opto-mechanical apparatus required for the process is described. The generation of a variety of shapes by multi-layer cladding and some of the problems involved are also discussed. Finally a simplified technique for determining comparative residual stresses in multi-layer clad deposits of varying thicknesses is suggested.