Rapid Prototyping Technology

This study investigated the use of rapid prototyping technologies and its benefits to human life advancement. Many new technologies have been applied, but not all of them can directly give positive contributions to human life advancement. This study conducted to give accurate information about how the RP technology can give benefits to human life advancement.

The details about how rapid prototyping technology is affecting human life and industry, the benefits, current use and the future development also being studied for this report. The author has been collecting the information by asking the experts and through some literatures. Keywords: technology; prototype; rapid prototyping; Technology runs in the manner of society. It is the fuel that drives human lives. It took most of the part of daily life and definitely benefited society. The automation brought about by technology has saved human effort and time to a large extent.

It has brought distant places closer and simplified information access. Nowadays, many new technologies have been applied. One of the technologies is the “Rapid Prototyping Technology”. In this context, the main purpose of this work is to present the real concept of rapid prototyping technology. In order to give more understanding in the concept, we need to determine the use of rapid prototyping technology, the process, and how it affects to human life advancement. Rapid Prototyping technology has become more and more popular over the ast few years.

There have been so many articles and works published in books, internet, conferences, and journals in this area of technology. Many literatures have been reviewed in the process of making this report. Instructional designers are faced with demands not only to generate high quality products, but also to reduce design and development time. One solution to this dilemma is the use of rapid prototyping methodologies. This technology can automatically construct physical models from CAD (Computer-Aided Design) data.

It was used to produce models and prototype parts, but today, they are used for a wider range of applications and to manufacture production-quality parts in relatively small numbers. This technology give benefits such as time and cost savings, and it is the most innovative ways in industry. The use of additive manufacturing for rapid prototyping takes virtual designs from computer aided design (CAD) or animation modeling software, transfers them into thin, virtual, horizontal cross-sections and then creates successive layers until the model is complete.

Rapid prototyping is being used in just about all industrial sectors. This technology are typically has been used in software engineering, but recently other sectors have devised ways to apply these methodologies to their work. The Definition Based on Wikipedia [11], rapid prototyping is the automatic construction of physical objects using additive manufacturing technology. RP involves the development of a working model of an instructional product that is used early in a project to assist in the analysis, design, development, and evaluation of an instructional innovation.

It is a type of formative evaluation that can effectively be used early and repeatedly throughout a project. This technology provides a fast and inexpensive alternative for producing prototypes and functional models. It process provides engineers and designers the capability to print the ideas in three dimensions, the ease to build complex shapes. This technology can build intricate internal structures, parts inside of parts, and very thin-wall features easily, as easy as building a simple cube. RP also reduce time required by human to build parts.

The machines run unattended until the part is complete. The time set up by the operator to control the program. As a result, the user intervention times still remain far less than the traditional machining process. Thus, models can usually be built within hours, and the build materials for most processes are generally inexpensive. Even more, some of the RP machines are small and environmentally friendly, so they can be placed into the user’s office, just like a common photocopy machine. Historical Development: The Origins of RPT

Prototyping processes have gone through three phases of development: manual prototyping (mid-1960s), soft or virtual prototyping (mid-1970s), and rapid prototyping (mid-1980s). Thus, Rapid prototyping is the third phase of prototyping. Based on the literature reviewed, Charles Hull is the one who developed the first RP process, called stereolithography [1]. With the introduction of RP, CAD solid models suddenly come to life. Designers and engineers now have the power to go through several iterations of a design in order to get the best possible performance for their needs.