What is Rapid Prototyping?
Rapid prototyping services are all about creating a prototype of a product or its upgrades. We use it to create a scale model of a physical part through three-dimensional computer aided design.
What are the Benefits of Rapid Prototyping?
This technique gives you the opportunity to test and analyze the design of a product. Benefits include: spotting inaccuracies in the product design and fix it immediately before the actual production. It allows companies to see how a product will look and feel before it even hits the market.
3D Rapid Prototyping
Types of Rapid Prototyping
3D2Go utilizes several methods to create 3D prototypes
Liquid-based Prototyping
The initial form its material is in a liquid state. It converts into solid state through the process of curing.
Solid-based Prototyping
Encompasses all forms of materials in the solid state. It includes the shape of a wire, roll, laminates, and pallets.
Powder-based Prototyping
Although in a solid state, it is not considered as solid-based to mean powder in grain-like form.
Liquid-based Prototyping
Stereolithography (SLA) is considered as the most widely used rapid prototyping technology. It uses a low-power, highly focused UV laser to produce a 3D object in a vat of liquid photosensitive polymer.
Solid-based Prototyping
There are 2 types of solid-based prototyping:
- Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) - The process where plastic or wax materials extrude through a nozzle. It traces the cross sectional geometry layer by layer.
- Laminated Object Manufacturing (LOM) - In this process, layers of plastic or paper fuse or laminate together using heat and pressure. It is then cut into the desired shape with a computer-controlled laser or blade.
Powder-based Prototyping
There are 3 types of powder-based prototyping:
- Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) - During SLS, the heat fuses together tiny particles of plastic, ceramic, or glass from a high-power laser to form a solid, 3D object. It is often the method of choice for additively manufactured parts with critical material properties common in the fields of aerospace and medicine.
- 3D printing - Its process is almost like the SLS process. The difference is SLS uses a laser to sinter the material. In 3D printing, an ink-jet printing head deposits a liquid adhesive that binds the material.
- Direct Metal Laser Sintering - The first commercial rapid prototyping method to produce metal parts in a single process. One advantage of DMLS compared to SLS is the small size of the particles which enables very detailed parts.
