3D Rapid Prototyping Changing, Improving Manufacturing Process

“Faster. Better. Cheaper.”

 No, this is not the introduction to a “Six Million Dollar Man” episode from the 1970s. It’s the new mantra of today’s manufacturing companies, which are using innovative methods to get their products to market faster, better, and at lower cost than ever before.

Who would’ve thought these words would be used to describe manufacturing?

 In the old days, manufacturing took time. The “time to market” was clearly a lengthy cycle in any industry because getting a product from concept stage to being available for purchase took a while. Product development often had a difficult time making it out of the engineering department, based on such variables as initial approval, testing phases, budgeting, staffing allocations, manufacturing, and shipping — the list goes on.

But today, that’s all different. Thanks to an innovative process known as “3D rapid prototyping,” time to market can be greatly reduced. And the strange thing is — the technology is nothing new. It has been around for nearly three decades.

Known as “additive manufacturing,” 3D printing is used to fabricate models, prototypes, and parts from resin material. Using a CAD drawing, a part can be printed in a matter of hours.

Today’s high-end 3D rapid-prototype printers have improved exponentially over the last decade. There are machines with better print quality and resolution, significantly higher run speeds, more material choices, properties, and shades of color, and less of a footprint. It’s possible to buy a 3D printer to sit on your desk — similar in size to a laser printer — for printing convenience at your fingertips.

So, not only are 3D printers more capable, but also the range and mechanical properties of 3D print materials are expanding. The result of all this is that advanced 3D printers are becoming a must-have fixture within every large product-development company, from the automotive sector to electronic goods and household appliances.

Manufacturers are able to cut out much of their secondary tooling processes, such as injection molding, resin tooling, mold making, and soft tooling. And all of this will go into helping them shorten their time to market and reduce costs.

There is not a mechanical engineer on the face of the planet who wouldn’t want to hold their product idea in his hands — to see it, to feel its material properties, and to test how it works. A design engineer could have a new product idea on Tuesday, design a CAD drawing of it on Wednesday morning, and print a 3D part to have in-hand for the sales department’s customer meeting on Wednesday afternoon. Rapid prototyping virtually eliminates the need for preproduction tooling and speculative (costly) manufacturing.

Engineers today are using 3D rapid prototyping much the same way the business world embraced “spell check” for word-processing documents. It’s a step in the process that saves costly mistakes by enabling form, fit, and function testing prior to manufacturing.

There’s no end to the innovation that is taking place using 3D rapid prototyping, on a small and grand scale. According to The Wall Street Journal, Boeing plans to someday make an airplane wing without cutting or bending any metal — using a giant 3D printer. General Electric is getting in on the act, too, for new technology in health care. From musical instruments to dental orthodontics and automotive parts — 3D printing is turning ideas into reality.

The U.S. is obviously competing with other countries on the cost of manufacturing. And, 3D printing is but one tool to explore innovation and cost reduction, to determine if a product can be built stronger with less material, for example, or as a tool to check if a new design will function properly.

Businesses today compete with ideas in a global marketplace. In order to do battle in this modern, “instant” world, ideas have to be generated quickly. What’s your next-generation product? You’d better come up with it fast and it needs to be better than your competition’s product.

One of our customers is a major luggage manufacturer. We built a prototype of handles and a new wheel design on a piece of luggage so it could be tested via focus group for instant feedback critical to the manufacturing process. Another customer, a world-renowned gaming-technology company, came up with a cover design that we prototyped for a casino machine that would use less plastic, saving millions of dollars in the process.

For a major golf-ball manufacturer we prototyped four dozen balls, each with different dimple arrays, in a matter of two days. These balls were blown through a wind tunnel to see how they would react for speed and accuracy — something that would never have been possible before with traditional manufacturing processes.

Three-dimensional rapid prototyping is revolutionizing the manufacturing floor. The future is here, and its “one-off,” meaning it’s possible to produce just one part or model cost effectively, versus having to produce thousands. When faced with the pace of rapid change, 3D printing is allowing more businesses to compete and take advantage of developing opportunities in their own backyards and around the world. It puts imagination and innovation back into the hands of more companies.

Andy Coutu is president of R&D Technologies Inc., a Rhode Island–based reseller of 3D rapid-prototype printers and scanners. Contact him at acoutu@rnd-tech.comor visit www.rnd-tech.com