From: Mark Glusker This process has improved dramatically over the past few years. The materials are now quite durable. It is not necessarily cheaper to use stereo lithography: it is best for small parts with lots of detail-per- cubic-inch. Simple parts or large parts are best fabricated using conventional machining methods. If you are making a part to be used as a master for a mold, don't forget to enlarge the original by several percent (depending on the final material) to account for molding shrinkage. Despite the improvements in this field, the best stereo lithography part is still not nearly as good as a well machined part. It's very much like the difference between a well printed photograph and a scanned image printed on a good laserwriter. Used appropriately, it is a great tool but Bridgeport is not about to go the way of Friden or Monroe. {Bridgeport is a very-famous maker of milling machines; Friden and Monroe were once-vital makers of mechanical desktop calculators; they are now history. -nb} [Mark also wrote:] -- Mark Glusker, glusk@sgi.com >From glusk@mechcad3.engr.sgi.com Sun Jul 27 19:13:05 1997 Date: Sun, 27 Jul 1997 16:04:04 -0700 (PDT)