ACCELERATING PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT USING RAPID PROTOTYPING SYSTEMS

摘要

Rapid product development, cost savings, and getting the right product to market quickly are common goals in today's competitive marketplace. And rapid-modeling, -prototyping, and -tooling Systems are the tools used to achieve these goals. Innovations for every phase of the product-development cycle have been introduced - from 3D printing of concept models, to functional prototypes for testing, to production tooling. Developments in one method of rapid prototyping, fused deposition modeling, will be discussed in this paper. These developments include X/Y deposition-velocity increases, new tool-path-generation Software, and dissolvable-support material. Also, two recent case studies will be reviewed, each highlighting how a global manufacturer has used rapid prototyping Systems and concurrent engineering to accelerate its design and development processes.