Rapid prototyping is a vital process that is widely used in the industrial and manufacturing sector that ranges from the aerospace industry, medical, automotive industry to the consumer and home appliance you can name it, the list is endless. We are going to highlight about various aspects of rapid prototyping China briefly.
What is Rapid prototyping?
In simple terms, rapid prototyping is a fast production or creation of a working model. In the manufacturing process, rapid prototyping is used in producing a three-dimensional model of a product or part. The process is also crucial in 3-D visualization and testing the efficiency of product design before rolling out large-scale production.
How Rapid prototyping works?
Before delving any further, let’s try to understand the basic of Rapid Tooling. The technology was first introduced in 1987 that uses an additive process which creates parts by joining layers of particles or raw materials. In rapid prototyping materials used mainly during this additive process are ceramic powders, thermoplastics, metal powders, and photopolymers.
Rapid tooling involves other processes that are either compressive and subtractive. During the design phase, most designers create prototypes for experimentation and testing. As we know prototyping process can eat up a lot of your time, this is where rapid prototyping comes in making the whole process faster and cost-effective especially during this times of rising cost, providing the perfect solution.
Basics of Rapid prototyping
Rapid prototyping china has four key areas during development.
Input- This stage entails describing the product with 3D data. The initial starting point can either be physical or computer model. The physical model involves data acquisition while the computer model is produced using a CAD system
Method- Mainly methods used by rapid prototyping businesses are categorized into groups.
- Binding, solidifying and melting
- Joining or cutting
- Photo-curing
Materials- The materials used is one of the critical areas in rapid prototyping that can either powder, liquid or solid state. Ranging from metals, paper, wax resins ceramics and nylon.
Applications- Applications for rapid prototyping are grouped according to engineering, tooling, design, analysis, and manufacturing.
Benefits of Rapid Tooling
Designers and engineers always encounter an uphill task in trying to explain and describe how a product will feel and look. Rapid prototyping china offers a lot of benefits from product conceptualization to accurately pointing out the potential of the product.
Some of the benefits of this process are
- Accommodating changes within the shortest time possible
- Eliminating or reducing design flaws
- Custom-tailored designs
- Saves time and money
- It brings to light the design concept.