onal methods have the following disadvantages: 1) material removed during forming operations is difficult to reclaim and/or recycle; 2) traditional machining in the form of drilling, turning, or milling is limited in the types of shapes it can easily produce; and, finally, 3) in the event of a sudden design change, conventional tooling often becomes prohibitively expensive to alter and may very often require complete re-manufacture of the part and/or the tooling.
RP permits adding successive material layers until the desired shape is achieved thus reducing, or at least avoiding, material loss. CAD data is "sliced" down to 0.1 to 0.25 mm thicknesses. Development steps are significantly reduced since, with RP, draftsperson/designers are virtually eliminated; the pattern maker and/or the toolmaker become similarly absent from the development equation. In those industries plagued by either time or budget to create sufficient models for thoroughly evaluating good form, fit and function, RP offers some very exciting alternative options.
Rapid Prototyping (RP) is particularly appropriate to those industries and businesses having one or more of the following characteristic features: 1) the time to market is critical and thus the need is very real to significantly decrease the lead time on new products; 2) products are technically constrained, often requiring highly iterative (and therefore very long) development cycles; and 3) the need for highly personalized products where components may need to be "fit" to the specific model, thus offering higher "value added" for the manufacturer and the associated higher level of customer satisfaction and acceptance.
Today's global marketplace is becoming characterized by frequent introductions of product variations, each having a life cycle quite different from its preceding product. As lead times become shorter and global competition more intense, the number of industries and/or applicat...