Association of Commercial Energy Assessors

 
Re-Cast of the EPBD
In just a few days time the requirement for commercial EPCs at the point of sale will have been with us for a full year. I think we can all agree this year has been disappointing to say the least, with compliance struggling up to around 25% of the market ( according to the latest surveys) and little sign of government doing anything much about it. However the re-cast of the EPBD features the following wording:-
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Home Energy Efficient Buildings Energy Efficient Buildings Rapid Prototyping - Chris Harding
Rapid Prototyping - Chris Harding PDF Print E-mail
Rapid prototyping is a relativly new technology and one which is predicted to play a crucial role in the futre of design and manufacturing. This process takes designs from comuter aided design (CAD) or animation modeling software and divides them into thin horizontal cross-sections. These cross sections are then assembled in real space layer by layer till the model is finished. This method of construction is called additive layer manufacturing (ALM).

Applications of this process include medical where replacement bones can be made with the same dimensions to the intended patient. Concept design for the automotive and construction industry, it has also been used by sculptors to produce complex shapes. Exeter Universtity is currently running research into the applications of ALM in the chocolate industy, the idea being that ppeople can design and make their own chocolate however they want to.

Current technologies which use ALM focus on laying down successive layers of powder or fluid and then using a laser to solidfiy the material. The following are several different was which ALM is being applied currently:

Prototyping technologies

  • Base materials
  • Selective laser sintering (SLS)
  • Thermoplastics, metals powders
  • Fused deposition modeling (FDM)
  • Thermoplastics, eutectic metals.
  • Stereolithography (SLA)
  • Photopolymer
  • Laminated object manufacturing (LOM)
  • Paper
  • Electron beam melting (EBM)
  • Titanium alloys
  • 3D printing (3DP)
  • Various materials

ARUP

ARUP used rapid prototyping to creat a model of their design for the ´Water Cube´ aquatics centre for the Beijing Olympics. Their complex structure was made using two different techniques, sintered nylon powder and solidified epoxy resin. Using these process they were able to creat a very complex structure in a relativly short time period, even though the model was created in plane 01mm thick this was a much faster proces than if the job had been given to someone to machine out. The model ARUP created included 24000 elements with roughly 12000 nodes (points where three elements connected), this would be a near impossible task to completed for a human but using ALM it would have taken less than a week for the machine to produce the entire model.

 


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