Prototyping is the process of creating a sample product model to be tested in the real world environment and to serve as the basis for other processes.
Traditional prototyping involves designing, developing, building and manufacturing a model of our product, usually by designers and developers using pencil, pencil and paper or a CAD design software file; Whereas rapid prototyping (RP) involves additive 3D printing of the scaled model of the part or assembly using a 3D printer and 3D additive layer fabrication technology, without planning or tools of the manufacturing process.
Prototyping is the design verification and tuning phase of product development as you test and demonstrate the design. We want to be able to touch and feel, test and demonstrate a product before actually manufacturing it, whether in mass production or from an expensive material, and we want to make sure that our design is tailored to our needs and applications.
It allows us to display and showcase the new product, whether it be to our managers, our investors, our designers, and / or our clients. It allows us to test our ideas and concepts to see if it can actually work in the real world, as well as test the design to see if it passes all the requirements tests. We can also use a prototype to evaluate if we need to make improvements and changes if necessary.
We can build a partial prototype or we can build the part itself, looking and feeling like the complete product. It may or may not work, or it may work only partially to test only parts of the design. The final version will probably look good and work fine.
So how does a traditional “old school” prototype differ from a fast one? The traditional prototyping method involves making mockups out of different materials, including clay, foam, wood, plastics, and metal. It may have additional materials such as cables, tape, etc. We can create it by hand: cut, paste, tape or we can manufacture it with CNC milling machines. On the other hand, rapid prototyping includes technology that creates the 3D part from the CAD file itself (without paper designs) on a computer and 3D printer, using materials such as ABS, PLA, PETT, HIPS, HDPE, PVA, resin, ceramics. , nylon, stainless steel and more.
3D printing is becoming more popular recently due to the fact that we can control the speed and precision of parts made with it, and we can create very complex prototypes with it that we might not be able to do if we machine. The part made with a 3D printer can be almost identical to what the final product will look like, giving a much better idea of the “real deal”. Also, there is much less waste material in 3D printing and it is usually a one-man task, saving money on staff and personnel. There may be a large number of designers working on developing a single prototype, which makes it challenging, but most 3D printing software offers timing options so everyone can be on the same page.
Once we get past the prototyping phase and need to mass-produce parts quickly, then the additive manufacturing process is probably less effective and slower (having to produce each layer at the same time) than traditional manufacturing methods. of parts, such as CNC machining. with a CNC router. Also, it is sometimes impossible to use the 3D printer to produce a large or large-scale part, and having to manufacture the parts in sections and then glue them together can be tricky.
However, it does not matter if we are using a traditional prototyping technology or a rapid additive, a prototype serves as a tool for learning, experimenting, visualizing and improving the design and gaining knowledge. This tool is especially useful in cases where the end product is very complex and may require various design changes, more specifically in industries such as medical, automotive, bioengineering, aerospace, marine, and more.