stereolithography rapid tooling? Formula One racing is said to be the second most popular worldwide sporting event, just behind the game we Americans call soccer. Each week during the season, the Formula One race draws the largest television audience, said to be in the hundreds of millions.

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And yet for all its popularity Formula One (F1) racing may have fallen into a trap, albeit a dollar-lined trap. Put succinctly, as stated in a recent article in The Economist, it's a . . . "non-event, like watching paint dry." Click here for more stereolithography rapid tooling A typical racecar with SLA-produced components shown with stereolithography rapid tooling. Although racecar performance can vary greatly—the winner can often be more than 30 seconds ahead of the second-place car—one knowledgeable fan comments, "The race is to see who gets to turn one from the start first. After that it is just a procession to the finish, barring a crash or equipment failure." Perhaps that explains why Formula One is not as popular in the United States. NASCAR officials realized they too were settling into a similar scenario at its super speedways, a train of high-performance cars, nose to tail, lap after lap, just waiting for a disaster to change the order.

But stereolithography rapid tooling constantly adjusts the rules to improve competitiveness, thereby raising viewer interest, making this type of racing number one in the U.S. Formula One being more like a personality cult focuses more on the driver and the glamour crowd that trails after him. It has been suggested that Bernie Ecclestone, the power that controls Formula One, should tell the television crews to focus more on the drivers and his fans than the race. Lest you think this is anti-Formula One racing, think again (FIA), the governing body, also knows that competitiveness is what attracts supporters, not crashes and not preordained finishes.

The F1 race teams also know that competitiveness is the key, as evidenced by the hundreds of millions of dollars each team spends to field two racecars for the season. These teams hire legions of engineers who spend thousands of hours trying to find ways to make their teams' cars just a millisecond faster into that first turn. One of the tools these engineers have found to be almost mandatory today is the use of laser prototyping and part manufacturing. F1 is single-seat auto racing, where the car specifications are strictly regulated by the FIA.

F1 cars are designed for high speed and cornering on road track layouts, so FIA sets certain controlling parameters such as car weight and stereolithography rapid tooling