Technology is growing day by day, and the mass manufacturing has been one of the greatest contributors to polluting the planet throughout the 20th century and the early 21st century. There is a need of new technology in the field of manufacturing that can reduce the pollution and saves the time. In the history, a lot of research in the field of manufacturing has been carried out to resolve the problem of pollution, but the results were not pretty good. In the 1980s, the new technology named “Rapid Prototyping” hit the market.
Rapid prototyping is quite a recent technology in the field of manufacturing. Rapid prototyping is nothing but a physical model that is automatically constructed layer by layer. Rapid prototyping is a kind of additive manufacturing process which is used for automatically constructing the 3D physical model with the help of a virtual 3D CAD (Computer Aided Design) model data using automated machines. Here the products are constructed by adding, depositing or solidifying one or more materials in a horizontal layer wise process.
All the conventional methods for manufacturing the products take a lot of time, and they are limited for manufacturing only simple products. Manufacturing of complex and intricate shapes is very challenging for the conventional machines. Rapid prototyping is an accurate and fast way of manufacturing. This technology brings higher fidelity from the virtual design as compared to the conventional method of manufacturing. It is capable of producing any complex, irregular shapes, hollow components and intricate shapes in few hours using the additive manufacturing technique.
One important difference between the Conventional methods of manufacturing and the rapid prototyping is that In Rapid Prototyping, the Models are created by layer to layer addition whereas conventional method uses subtractive process in which the material is removed from the workpiece. The materials used for building the products in rapid prototyping are also inexpensive. The products produced by rapid prototyping have good dimensional accuracy, tolerance and surface finish.
The use of Rapid Prototyping is increasing year by year. With the growth of market and technology, competition is also increasing day by day and to beat the competitors, it is necessary to provide the products with different designs in the cheapest way without taking much more time. This technology helps the industries to produce a model with a variety of design in a reasonable cost. Rapid prototyping enables the engineer and designer to convert their ideas in 3D form.
There are many advantages of using Rapid prototyping such as there is no need of tooling, minimum wastage of material, high efficiency, high accuracy, reduction in cost and time, high resolution, no geometric limitation etc. Although initial investment and the installation cost for rapid prototyping is very high, but a lot of researches are still going on in the field of rapid prototyping to make this technology available and affordable for all the industries.
As this is a new technology, so it requires some additional skills to operate the rapid prototyping machines like one should have a good knowledge of design software’s like AutoCAD, CAT IA etc. and should have a good hand on software's.
Rapid prototyping involves many stages starts, with creating the 3D model of the design and then converting this CAD model into STL file format. After converting it into STL (Stereo lithography) format, Slicing of the STL file is done into thin layers. Finally, the model is constructed layer by layer. At last, cleaning and post-processing is done.
There are many types of Rapid Prototyping techniques based on the starting material such as liquid-based, solid-based and powder based. Stereo lithography, Selective Laser Sintering, Selective Laser Melting, Multi-Jet Modeling, Fused Deposition Modeling, Laminated Object Manufacturing etc. are widely used rapid prototyping techniques.
In the early days, this technology is used for the production of prototypes and models only. But with the advancement of technology, this technology is widely used all over the world for many applications. Apart from the industrial application, it is also used in medical field, automobile industries, defense sector, jewelry industries, sculpting etc. Hence, the use of Rapid Prototyping in various industries is undoubtedly a profitable decision.
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