subject: The Different Types Of Rapid Prototyping And Its Importance [print this page] If you are on the manufacturing industry, you probably understand the importance of prototyping in the development of plastic parts. During the research and development of a specific product, prototyping plays an important role.
Understanding the Importance of Prototypes
As you can see, prototypes are very important to the manufacturing industry. Just imagine a specific product being mass produced. If the manufacturers suddenly see damages or any problems on the products, it means that all the products that are produced will all have the same problems. So what will be the outcome? The company will be wasting a lot of time and money to redo all the products that they manufactured.
This is the main reason why prototyping is very important. For every part of the product, a prototype is created to find out if there are any problems on the product. Prototyping is present every step of the way to make sure that the final product will not have any flaws or problems.
Simple Explanation on Rapid Prototyping
As the name implies, rapid prototyping is the faster method to create prototype parts. With the help of Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC) machining, the time period of creating prototypes decreased significantly from days to hours. This is actually considered as an additional manufacturing process that creates model based from a CAD model.
Different Types of Rapid Prototyping
Depending on the needs of the manufacturers, there are different kinds of rapid prototyping used in creating prototype parts.
The first one is Stereolithography. This kind of prototyping makes use of UV Ray to help solidify the liquid acrylic polymer. It will be solidified layer by layer on a moving platform until the prototype is formed. This process is made through a machine known as VAT. It is a device that is filling up with photocurable liquid acrylate polymer. This kind of prototyping is very popular because of its accuracy. It is also faster than any other types so this is a preferable type of prototyping.
Another one is Fused Deposition Modeling. This kind of prototyping technology is used to convert CAD drawings into physical parts. It means that after creating physical parts on a CAD drawing, this type of prototyping can immediately create the parts based on the drawing.
Selective Laser Sintering on the other hand is a heating process that prevents melting and produces a coherent mass. In this kind of process, as the name suggests, metals or non metal powders will be sintered with the use of a CAD program guided laser that will selectively fuse the powdered material.
These are only some of the main types of rapid prototyping. No matter what kind of prototyping you use, they all have the same benefits. They will help you reduce the errors and problems during the manufacturing process and help you save more time, effort and money.
