Prototyping Technology

ABSTRACT
The competition in the world market for manufactured products has intensified tremendously in recent years. It has become important, if not vital, for new products to reach the market as early as possible, before the competitors. To bring products to the market swiftly, many of the processes involved in the design, test, manufacture and market of the products have been squeezed, both in terms of time and material resources. The efficient use of such valuable resources calls for new tools and approaches in dealing with them, and many of these tools and approaches have evolved. They are mainly technology driven, usually involving the computer. This is mainly a result of the rapid development and advancement in such technologies over

In any design practice, the word “prototype” is often not far from the things that the designers will be involved in. Prototyping is the process of realizing these prototypes. Here, the process can range from just an execution of a computer program to the actual building of a functional prototype. Rapid prototyping typically falls in the range of a physical prototype, usually are fairly accurate and can be implemented on a component level or at a system level. The versatility and range of different prototypes, from complete systems to individual components, that can be produced by RP at varying degrees of approximation makes it an important tool for prototyping in the product development process. Adding the major advantage of speed in delivery, it has become an important component in the prototyping arsenal not to be ignored. Worldwide, the most commonly used term is Rapid Prototyping. The term is apt as the key benefit of RP is its rapid creation of a physical model. However, prototyping is slowly growing to include other areas. Soon, Rapid Prototyping, Tooling and Manufacturing (RPTM) should be used to include the utilization of the prototype as a master pattern for tooling and manufacturing. The commonly used terms include Direct CAD Manufacturing, Desktop Manufacturing and Instant Manufacturing. CAD Oriented Manufacturing is another term and provides an insight into the issue of orientation.

The intention of having a physical prototype is to realize the conceptualization of a design. Hence, a prototype is usually required before the start of the full production of the product. Prototyping processes have gone through three phases of development, the last two of which have emerged only in the last 20 years [7]. Like the modeling process in computer graphics [8], the prototyping of physical models is growing through its third phase. Table 1.1 shows the parallels between computer/geometric modelling process and prototyping for each phase. The three phases are described as