During the workshops I have learnt the importance of converting your ideas into a tangible or CAD simulation prototype. In the earlier stages of product development once the team has selected the concept and wanted to pursue with their that idea, it is really important to make sketches and do some rough, quick and dirty prototyping as this will reveal number of issues related to design, feasibility and questions related to user experience. Right after the rapid prototype workshop I enrolled for a special course designed for 3D printing enthusiast. To learn how to use and print your own model with complex lattice structures. To meet the rigorous demands of product designers and development engineers, prototyping materials are the critical link to product design validation and product development process efficiency. Successful OEMs and product developers understand the value of time. Time-to-market can be dramatically reduced if prototype-to-production bridge materials mirror production material specifications. Most often it is not practical to produce hard tools to make a few parts. Hard tools are costly and time consuming. Design iterations and engineering revisions could quickly absorb budget, time and patience to complete a project.
The basic procedure for all rapid prototyping techniques can be summarized as follows:
1. A CAD model is built, then converted to STL format. The resolution can be set to minimize stair stepping.
2. The Rapid Prototype machine processes the .STL file by creating sliced layers of the model.
3. The first layer of the physical model is created. The model is then lowered by the thickness of the next layer, and the process is repeated until completion of the model.
4. The model with any unnecessary supports are removed from the final product. The surface of the model is then manually finished and cleaned.
Source: http://www.efunda.com/processes/rapid_prototyping/intro.cfm
Figure 6. 3D printing selfie: An inspiration
Writing my last lecture diary today for this course I will conclude it on summarizing the main concepts which were discussed during the interdisciplinary product development course. The interdisciplinary teams going to play an important role in future products development. Now the trend is shifting towards more and more user and costumer oriented designing. Companies and startups are more focusing on the customer demands, what they need, what problems they are facing, these been possible because of including interdisciplinary team member in decision making and product development stages. So now they can bring up the issues on to the table long before launching any product or service. Having a R&D person, marketing and manufacturing person sitting on the same table and brain storming for a unified goal or product will close the communication gap which uses to exist before when every team members used to work individually on their tasks without hearing the input from the person of different skill expertise. The design problems needed to be approach in a systemic ways, ones cannot tackle the problems or can came up with best possible solution if the project is not started in a systemic way. For designing a new product there is a systemic approach in which you start with choosing a team, choosing a project management method, development process, knowing the main problem of your project which you have to solve, from those problems you have to extract the requirement, needs or constraints depending upon the external governing factors. Lean startup product development combine with agile has to be adopted for startup companies. Once you know the domain of your problem and constraints then you start looking for benchmark, patents so you can create the concepts and once you have selected enough concepts within your team then you need to evaluate them using the pre