The Use of Sacrificial Support Structures in a Rapid Machining Process

Rapid prototyping techniques for CNC machining have been developed in an effort to produce functional prototypes in appropriate materials. One of the major challenges is to develop an automatic fixturing system for the part during the milling process. The current proposed method, sacrificial support fixturing, is similar to the support structures used in existing rapid processes, such as Stereolithography. During the machining process, the sacrificial supports emerge incrementally and, at the end of the process, are the only entities connecting the part to the stock material. In this paper, we propose methodologies for the design of sacrificial support structures for a rapid machining process