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Rapid prototyping technology is the world's advanced manufacturing technology at present. In industrialized countries, it has become an important strategy for companies to adopt rapid prototyping in the process of new product development to improve the design quality. At present, market competition is intensifying and product upgrading is accelerating. In order to maintain the competitiveness of its products in the domestic and foreign markets, it is urgent to actively adopt advanced innovation methods while increasing investment in new product development and enhancing innovation awareness.
Rapid prototyping technology has been applied in many fields, mainly in design inspection, market forecasting, engineering testing, assembly testing, mold manufacturing, medicine, aesthetics and so on. RP technology is the most widely used in the manufacturing industry (up to 67%), indicating that Rapid prototyping technology has a huge impact on improving the design and manufacturing level of products.
There are still many shortcomings in rapid prototyping technology. The next step in research and development is mainly in the following aspects:
(1) Improve the reliability, productivity and ability to produce large parts of rapid prototyping systems, especially to improve the precision of rapid prototyping systems;
(2) Development of an economical rapid prototyping system;
(3) Improvement and innovation of rapid prototyping methods and processes;
(4) Application of rapid mold manufacturing;
(5) Develop rapid prototyping materials with good performance;
(6) Development of high-speed software for rapid prototyping.
Rapid prototyping technology is an effective means of manufacturing complex prototypes or parts in the industrial sector, enabling product design and mold production to be synchronized. Rapid prototyping can improve the research and development efficiency of the enterprise, shorten the product design cycle, greatly reduce the cost and risk of new product development, and is especially suitable for products with small external dimensions and special shapes.
Integration of CAD/CAM technology
Integration of design and manufacturing has always been a difficult point in product development. At present, computer-aided technology (CAPP) is still unable to fully interface with CAD and CAM, which is one of the difficulties that have restricted the informationization of manufacturing industry. The rapid prototyping technology integrates CAD, CAM, laser technology, numerical control technology, chemical engineering, material engineering and other technologies to realize the concept of design and manufacturing integration.
A wide variety of molding materials
A variety of materials can be used in rapid prototyping equipment, including resins, nylons, plastics, paraffin, paper, and metal or ceramic powders. This basically satisfies the mechanical performance requirements of most products for materials.
Create significant economic benefits
Compared to traditional machining methods, rapid prototyping can save more costs. At the same time, rapid prototyping technology shortens the product development cycle of the enterprise, which greatly reduces the problem of repeated modification of the design plan in the new product development process, and basically eliminates the problem of modifying the mold. The economic benefits created by rapid prototyping technology are obvious.
Wide range of application industries
After years of development, rapid prototyping technology has basically formed a mature system. In addition, the industry that the technology can be applied is gradually expanding. The RP technology is gradually used in product design, mold manufacturing, materials engineering, medical research, culture and art, and construction engineering, which makes RP technology have broad prospects.
