How Does 3d printing prototype Work?

If you've ever faced the hurdles of turning a concept into a concrete prototype, you know the process can be as daunting as it is exciting. The path from a digital design to a physical product is fraught with setbacks: from slow production to high costs to prototypes that fall short of expectations. 

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In the following guide, we'll walk you through the transformative power of Stratasys's technologies—step by strategic step. We're talking about faster turnaround times, meticulous detail, unparalleled design freedom, and prototypes that truly embody your vision.

What are the steps in the rapid prototyping process?

1. Digital Design and CAD Modeling
2. Preparing the 3D Printer
3. Printing the Prototype
4. Post-Processing and Finishing
5. Testing and Evaluation
6. Refinement and Optimization

Step 1: Digital Design and CAD Modeling

Every 3D-printed object starts with CAD software where you can create detailed 3D models, like Stratasys’ GrabCAD, which allows for a seamless transition from design to print, ensuring every tolerance and support structure is perfect for 3D printing.

Step 2: Preparing the 3D Printer

Selecting the appropriate 3D printing technology and material is crucial. Whether it's the robust FDM for strong, durable parts or our versatile PolyJet for models requiring fine detail and aesthetics, Stratasys printers are calibrated for excellence.

Step 3: Printing the Prototype

Next, the CAD model is processed by slicing software which translates it into a language that the printer can understand. Using Stratasys’s intuitive interfaces, importing and slicing the CAD model is simple – you can adjust print settings such as layer height and infill density for your specific needs. Then, watch as your printer does the work, turning your vision into a tangible prototype.

Step 4: Post-Processing and Finishing

Once printed, it's time for some elbow grease. Removing any supports, sanding down rough edges, and applying the finishing touches are all part of this stage, ensuring your prototype looks and feels as intended. Thankfully, if you’ve chosen a Stratasys printing solution, the time and effort involved in this stage can be cut in half. From water-soluble supports to ultra-smooth side-wall quality, the minimal amount of post-processing involved is one of our core differences.

Step 5: Testing and Evaluation

Prototypes are meant to be poked, prodded, and tested. This stage is crucial for evaluating your design's functionality and gathering valuable feedback for further iterations. From hyper-realistic PolyJet prototypes to high-performance, injection mold-quality P3 prototypes, to the durable all-rounders of FDM and Stereolithography, testing for color, form, fit and function enables greater collaboration and communication.

Step 6: Refinement and Optimization

Taking the feedback in your stride, refine and optimize your design. This may involve several rounds of tweaking and reprinting until everything is just right. The precision and repeatability of Stratasys printers mean that you can refine and optimize with confidence, achieving the desired outcome with minimal time and material waste.

Conclusion

As a product designer or engineer, you can significantly accelerate the creation and refinement of new products with 3D printing. The integration of Stratasys’s advanced rapid prototyping in your development process unlocks unparalleled speed, efficiency and unlocks greater creativity. Our suite of 3D printing technologies ensures that your visions are not just made real but made remarkable.

Start your journey here with a look at our eBook and Solutions Guide on Advanced Rapid Prototyping with Stratasys.

Prototyping effectively is an important part of the product life cycle. Through continuously testing and refining iterations, engineers can arrive at a final part design that works with the desired features and performance.

The first commercially available 3D printers birthed the concept of rapid prototyping. Before 3D printing, long lead times and high costs of low-volume parts meant product development teams could only iterate a few times before part designs needed to be finalized.

However, 3D printing slashed these long lead times and costs. Now, 3D printers allow engineers and R&D teams to validate their designs quicker, easier, and more cost effectively than before. Ultimately, this allows more design iterations to be squeezed into a given time frame — teams can arrive at final part designs earlier, and get validated products to market faster.

While the market is still crowded with printers strictly suitable for prototyping use, the emergence of industrial-scale additive manufacturing applies lead time and cost benefits far beyond PLA mockups. Industrial 3D printers now fabricate everything from tooling and specialized end-use parts at the point of need, in just days.

Even as 3D printing expands into more end-use applications, rapid prototyping continues to be an impactful way for manufacturers to improve product development. Read this blog to learn about rapid prototyping with 3D printing: what it is, how it works, its relationship to additive manufacturing, plus benefits and considerations.

Prototyping is an integral part of product design and engineering. It is an iterative process to arrive at an optimized, test-proven design.

Engineers will design an initial concept model of a part or product to test. Then, they will fabricate a part with the tentative design (the prototype), run it through a suite of tests, and then evaluate the design for upsides and areas of improvement. These activities will be repeated to arrive at a final validated design that satisfies desired customer and engineering requirements.

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Rapid prototyping is the use of digital technologies to design and fabricate prototypes faster and easier. Rapid prototyping typically relies on 3D printing technologies to fabricate the prototypes quickly, as it circumvents the need to use tool or die sets.

Beyond physical fabrication of prototypes, rapid prototyping includes engineering activities like design, modification, and testing.

Before rapid prototyping. Before commercial 3D printing, engineers had to rely on a combination of hasty foam mockups and detailed clay models crafted by skilled artisans. This meant far longer lead times for the manufacture of each prototype, as well as higher fabrication costs associated with each prototype part — ultimately allowing for fewer part iterations in each design cycle in any given span of time.

Rapid prototyping begins with the creation of a computer-aided design (CAD) file for the part’s first iteration. The user can then import the design file for the part into 3D printer software.

From there, the user hits print. In anywhere from hours to 1-2 days, the prototype part will be ready for testing, evaluation, and modification for the next iteration.

Many 3D printers, however, are limited to only prototype-grade parts. When using these printers, designs might require modifications to accommodate traditional manufacturing limitations.

When prototyping with industrial-scale additive manufacturing, users simply swap prototyping plastics such as PLA for higher-strength materials.

Formal definitions. The formal definition of 3D printing is a manufacturing process that uses layer-by-layer fabrication to translate digital CAD files into tangible objects. Rapid prototyping is one of many use cases for 3D printing.

Contemporary usage. Today, the term rapid prototyping is mainly associated with the old era of 3D printers. These early printers weren’t capable of delivering part strength or quality sufficient for higher-value manufacturing applications. This effectively limited their use to prototyping. Many of the earlier printers marketed as rapid prototyping solutions — thus branding 3D printing as a rapid prototyping technology until the last decade. Consequently, the two terms were often conflated and ‘rapid prototyping’ became a popular misnomer for ‘3D printing.’

Emergence of additive manufacturing. Today, the widespread term ‘additive manufacturing’ connotes a paradigm shift in 3D printing. The term typically describes 3D printing’s use for high-value industrial applications, such as performance-critical end use parts. Implicitly, the term speaks to 3D printing’s departure from its early use limited to rapid prototyping.

Employing a 3D printing platform to enable rapid prototyping offers numerous benefits compared to prototyping through traditional methods:

Shorter lead times. Rapid prototyping with 3D printing brings lead times down to anywhere from just hours to days.

Using traditional manufacturing methods, prototypes require new tooling, and/or additional processes like drafting drawings, submitting POs, and dealing with shipment times. Without in-house 3D printing, procuring each prototype can take weeks to months.

Faster lead times do more than just allay impatience — they create tangible business benefits. Companies can innovate faster and get their products to market sooner.

Cost efficiency. Compared to traditional manufacturing, using a 3D printer for rapid prototyping also has far more favorable unit economics. It does not require expensive specialized labor, third party vendor costs, or necessitate use of tool or die sets.

Ease of use. The simplicity of using a 3D printer for rapid prototyping also doesn’t hurt. Printing parts does not require specialized expertise: anyone can do it. Dedicated machinists do not have to commit long hours, nor is there a need to draft drawings, submit purchase orders, and coordinate logistical details with third party vendors.

Same-platform prototyping and production. Using an industrial-scale 3D printer — as opposed to one limited to weaker prototyping materials — means product developers can prototype and build tooling or the final part with same platform. This helps ensure a successful print job for the final part. Rather than making adjustments to accommodate limitations of subtractive manufacturing, users can simply swap to a higher-performance material.

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