3D Printing Of Rapid Prototyping

Without a doubt, one of most China rapid prototyping developments over the last ten years has been the rise of 3D printing for the masses. But there are limits to 3D printing. Printer is not enough to print a newspaper, a 3D printer will get you only so far in product development particularly forprototyping.

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First of all, you always need to keep in mind that a printer’s limitation, no matter whether it’s 3D printer,is always the input file. If your layout sucks, your printout also sucks. If the 3D CAD you feed the printer with is faulty, the resulting object will also be. So rule number one is: make sure your CAD is properly engineered.

If your only goal is to see a rough version of the prototype or product you are about to develop in real life, a 3D printer will do the trick.

But if you are further advanced in the process and want to verify whether the engineering is workable for tooling and mass production, meaning making sure all parts fit together, the mainstream 3D printer don’t work (yet).

Why? Because it’s all about tolerance. In engineering, the tolerance level defines the margin of error. No product is exactly. In production, there is a margin of error that is permitted, and that’s called the tolerance.

“Cheap” 3D printers (below USD 10K) typically have a tolerance of one mm. While that sounds very small for most of us, for engineers one millimetre is massive! A fraction of a millimetre can define whether a case fits your phone perfectly or whether it moves around inside the case in your hands.

So if you want to 3D print an object or product, make sure you got a proper CAD first. Once this is done, you need to think what you want to do with the 3D printed object. As a first view it’s fine, but if you want a 3D printing prototype, you most likely will have to go for a CNC prototype.