Rapid Prototyping

Introduction3

Discussion3

Conclusion6

References9

Rapid Prototyping

Introduction

Due to the pressure of international competition and market globalization in the 21st century, there continues to be strong driving forces in industry to compete effectively by reducing time-to-market and cost while assuring high quality product and service. Quick response to business opportunity has been considered as one of the important factors to ensure company competitiveness(Jacobs 2009). Rapid prototyping and manufacturing (RP&M) technique has shown a high potential to reduce the cycle and cost of product development, and has been considered as one of critical enabling tools in digital manufacturing to effectively aid rapid product development. RP&M mainly involves rapid prototyping (RP) and rapid tooling (RT). RP is a new forming process which fabricates physical parts layer by layer under computer control directly from 3D CAD models in a very short time. In contrast to traditional machining methods, the majority of rapid prototyping systems tend to fabricate parts based on additive manufacturing process, rather than subtraction or removal of material. Therefore, this type of fabrication is unconstrained by the limitations attributed to conventional machining approaches. (Pham & Dimov 2010)

Discussion

The application of RP technique as a compelling tool can provide benefits throughout the process of developing new products. Specifically, there are serious benefits that RP can bring in the areas of market research, sales support, promotional material, and the ever-important product launch. Physical RP can also become a powerful communication tool to ensure that everyone involved in the development process fully understands and appreciates the product being developed. Hence, it can help to reduce substantially the inevitable risks in the route from product concept to commercial success, and help shorten time-to-market, improve quality and reduce cost. In general, the application of RP to the product development process has shown a 60% decrease in lead-time over traditional methods (King & Tansey 2009) . From the emergence of the first RP system in 1988, RP technology has been introduced successfully in the industries of automotives, aerospace, electronics, toy and so on. The RP methods commercially available include StereoLithography (SL), Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), Fused Deposition Manufacturing (FDM), Laminated Object Manufacturing (LOM), Ballistic Particle Manufacturing (BMP), and Three-Dimensional Printing (3D printing) , and . RP is newly evolving toward rapid tooling (RT). RT is a technique that transforms the RP patterns into functional parts, especially metal or plastic parts. It offers a fast and low cost method to produce moulds and functional parts. Furthermore, the integration of both RP and RT in development strategy promotes the implementation of concurrent engineering in companies. Numerous processes have been developed for producing molds from RP systems. The RT methods can generally be divided into direct and indirect tooling categories, and also soft (firm) and hard tooling subgroups. Indirect RT requires some kinds of master patterns, which can be made by conventional methods (e.g. High-speed Machining, HSM), or more commonly by an RP process such as SL or SLS. Direct RT, as the name suggests, involves manufacturing a tool cavity directly on the RP system, hence eliminating ...