Rapid prototyping and fabrication are one of those technologies which you don¡¯t appreciate until you walk into someplace like the Boston Fab Lab at MIT and run into themt. Things we buy in the store just sort of pop into being without the consumer knowing anything about how they were made, be it by injecting liquid plastic into custom molds or using a robot to mill a block of metal into an intricate shape.

Anyway, a student named Mark used a ShopBot CNC machine (the best way to describe one is a robotic router/lathe/cutter) to build himself an electric five-string violin. The neck, chinrest, and sundry metal bits were purchased off the Net but the rest he engineered himself. Future additions to his violin include winding his own electromagnetic pickups for the strings. The body pieces were designed using the drawing package that is a part of OpenOffice and run through VCarve Pro to convert them into a format the ShopBot can carve out of blocks of plastic.

Since sophisticated urethane dispensing machines and CNC machine centers have found their way into polyurethane facilities, additive fabrication and rapid prototyping are gaining popularity in polyurethane processing, especially with these techniques¡¯ ability to reduce the development time and costs.

Here¡¯s a quick overview of some of the most promising rapid prototyping technology.

Stereolithography (SLA) and Selective Laser Sintering (SLS)

Both SLA and SLA start with precise 3D CAD data. The SLA machine builds the part layer by layer with a special laser to cure the liquid photopolymer to create a master. With the SLS, there is no liquid photopolymer. The materials range from wax to certain nylons and metals creating a more durable master. Watch for SLA¡¯s latest nickel plating technology, which produces a strong, mirror finish that¡¯s even waterproof.

Polyjet (Object) and Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM)

The key to Polyjet technology is a special inkjet with a built-in UV laser spraying to build each layer. Similarly, FDM feeds a plastic, wire-like filament unwrapped from a supply coil to a heated extrusion nozzle with an on-off valve spraying liquid polymer layer by layer. Polyjet is new and more costly than other processes featured here, but it has a niche for building small parts that require fine details. FDM offers more flexibility in polymers, with tradeoffs between strength and service temperature.

Rapid prototyping is one of the latest technologies which are used to make physical project directly from CAD data sources. Rapid Prototyping models can be used for testing, like when an airfoil shape is put into a wind tunnel, but normally the Rapid Prototyping material is not physically powerful. Rapid prototyping can be used in many ways. The main reasons of Rapid Prototyping are to enlarge successful communication and to reduce the cost of the growth project.

It also decrease expensive fault, to minimize behind engineering modification. And it also used to expand product lifetime by adding essential features and remove unneeded features in the early hours. The tendency in built-up industries keeps on stressing like increase number of alternative of products And Increase product difficulty. And it also decrease product lifetime earlier than obsolescence and Decrease liberation time. The great advantage of rapid prototyping is that it finds use and request in almost all the industries.

One big problem for US healthcare is technology moves much faster than the system of change and adoption in the current system. For obvious reasons, there are a lot of regulations, studies, and tests to help ensure effectiveness of processes and products that are introduced into healthcare services. Unfortunately, this system means the technology and ideas which could benefit patients and healthcare workers are years behind.

On Monday, at the Institute for the Future HealthCare 2020 open space meeting on Science and Technology in Health, which took place at the Kaiser Permanente Garfield Center, participants expressed frustration that rapid prototyping and iterative learning were not syncing up with the demands of scientific rigor. It seemed the rigors of science were being perceived as putting a bind on using new technologies and modes of interaction to quickly improve information and conditions for patients.

An idea that came up several times was to use crowdsourcing to get a greater amount of information and data more quickly and easily than clinic trials. While potentially very effective rife with opportunity, participants said such services are not seen as scientifically valid.

Like most complex challenges, this presents several opportunities for designers. One role designers can play is to ignore the current system, focus on the people and enablers, and design services that through their success and uptake transform the current system. For example, we could use crowdsourcing to enable people to share their information and stories to better understand their condition and help others. That is, I believe, what PatientsLikeMe aims to do.

But another role designers could play is facilitator between the needs of science and scientific rigor and the real, messy world of people and the technology enablers that provide new opportunities for healthcare services. In this role, we could find ways to engage all stakeholders, learn through doing, and through engaging and doing create advocates that will help propel transformation to a system that takes advantage of emerging technology, embraces rapid prototyping where appropriate, and improves the situation for everyone.

Recently I have finalized and begun prototyping, a long considered design for a device which allows me to do experiments in several areas.

The first being:

Organic imaging using DIY Bio technologies

DIY rapid prototyping, experimenting with application approaches, binders and curing techniques

Sculpture/image experiments using a router cutting and ink-jet head to both form and image onto 3D surfaces.

In addition one can imagine acquiring a high powered IR laser and beginning to cut plastic and wood for 2.5D rapid prototyping, or attaching a plasma cutter and cutting through sheets of metal with speed and high precision to make architectural elements etc.

In the current poor economic climate, it is vital that businesses spend their capital wisely. For most (especially small business), the days of having money to spend on risky ventures are gone. Nowhere is this more true than in the domain of new product development and testing. Businesses simply can not afford to risk diminishing resources on a product that may never see the light of the sales day. For these very reasons, rapid prototyping production tooling technology is the solve method to this very serious problem.

The most advantageous feature of this technology is that it affords the designer the ability to incorporate changes during the construction process and before the item is actually put into use.

There are numerous engineering advantages to this exciting technology as well. Rapid prototyping allows the design process to actually yield a creation to scale, which also means that errors can be located and improvements made prior to actual implementation. This ability to factor in improvements at the development stage has become the ¡®gold standard¡¯ for manufacturing technology.

Rapid prototyping offers this ability to incorporate improvement to a design as the imperfections are discovered gives designers more control than ever. It also increases the odds of creating a flawless product far earlier in the development phase than has been possible in the past.

Computer aided design or animated modeling software is used in the initial design phase of this process. Those programs then deconstruct the item and virtually ¡®break¡¯ it in to extremely thin horizontal cross sections. The rapid prototype machine can then construct the item by re-creating those cross sections in layers until an actual physical form results. Most additive manufacturing creates a physical object my layering liquid, powder or a sheet material.

The advantage to finding and correcting flaws before implementation is also paramount from the marketing and sales standpoint. The process also has the advantage of the capability to make just a few items, which is also far more cost effective.

There are many different techniques available today that fall under the main category of rapid prototyping. Some incorporate the traditional layering technique, while others use medium blown or poured into molds or casts.

Still others use metals as the construction material. Geographic location is not a factor in deciding which manufacturer can be engaged. Since rapid prototyping machines are programmed from computer design-generated files, the completed file can simply be transmitted to the manufacturing facility for fabrication. The advantages represented by rapid prototyping technology quickly eclipse the costs.

One of the technologies which have been gaining momentum in the additive fabrication space is Selective Laser Sintering (SLS).  Over the past few years this process has transitioned from being looked at strictly as a rapid prototyping solution to now being considered for rapid prototyping and final end use production tooling.  The aerospace and industrial product industries started using parts manufactured from this process as final end use production parts.

One of the main drivers for this transition is the materials that are offered.  The Duraform materials are nylon based and can also contain glass adders.  This enables the material to withstand up to 300 degree temperatures and gives the parts great durability features.  In additional, the parts can be coated to help improve their durability and moisture resistance. 

Rapid prototyping is the 3D object creation using advanced production tooling technology. This technology has only been around since the 1980s. Today, the use of rapid prototyping is used by manufacturing companies not only to create prototypes for mass production, but in many cases is used to create the final products themselves, if the quantity is low enough.

Additionally, many modern artists use 3D printing services to create customized one-time art pieces, a creation that would have been much more expensive just a few years ago.

Prior to the advent of rapid prototyping technology, prototypes had to be built in just the same way large-scale manufacturing was done, only everything was customized for just one piece. This meant that the molds themselves had to be custom made for each prototype job.

The costs were astronomical. In the late 1980s, after computer technology had been around for a few years, scientists found a way that they could merge computers and manufacturing. This enabled companies to design their prototypes on computer, and the computer would send the file to a manufacturing machine that would build the prototype in layers based on the computer file specifications.

The building was done simply by pouring a moldable layer and then firing before adding the next layer. This was an amazing cost savings to companies who needed the prototypes.

Unfortunately, rapid prototyping was still very slow, especially when you consider the time expensive of creating an object layer by layer. The process takes several hours to several days. Over time, rapid prototyping technology improved to make the models more accurate and more ready for usage.

Ultimately, this gave way to a form of prototyping called 3D printing.

3D printing is a form of rapid prototyping that uses layers, but is much quicker and more affordable than other types of creation. Products can even be made of different materials in a single build. 3D printing services are affordable for small businesses. The technology has even gone global.

In China, for instance, a computer prototype could be created to emulate the actual size and weight of the final product, and could even have the Chinese characters for computer imprinted on the product as a label.

Manufacturing wouldn¡¯t be where it is today without these amazing technological advances. 3D printing and rapid prototyping have and will continue to change the way business is done and the speed at which products reach the market.

A PhD student at the Royal College of Art in the UK has come up with a very unique use for rapid prototyping.

First: rapid prototyping is used in industrial product design to create physical models of computer-aided designs (CAD). Machines can be used to "read in data from a CAD drawing and lays down successive layers of liquid, powder, or sheet material, and in this way builds up the model from a series of cross sections. These layers, which correspond to the virtual cross section from the CAD model, are joined together or fused automatically to create the final shape. The primary advantage to additive fabrication is its ability to create almost any shape or geometric feature."