STEPS TO PROTOTYPING SUCCESS
“If a picture is worth 1000 words, a prototype is worth a thousand meetings” – IDEO.
If you’ve been involved with designing or developing new products or parts for manufacturing, you understand how true this is. Similar to any good book, there’s always a beginning, middle and end to each machining project. When it comes to machining, the beginning means prototyping.
This is where your idea comes to life for the first time.
What is a Prototype?
According to Wikipedia, “a prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process”.
A prototype is similar to a rough draft. It’s a mockup or an early iteration of the part we’re wanting to produce. With prototyping we can get a solid visualization of your design, and test your part in a “real world” environment for the first time.
Early feedback and changes saves time and money and provides validation before beginning the machining or manufacturing process. Rework after the fact is both time consuming and expensive, so let’s avoid that.
Benefits of Prototyping
One of the most important advantages of prototyping is that it allows you to simulate your future parts, test and correct your part design before committing to production. A few additional advantages of prototyping include:
- Faster parts design cycle
- Early discovery of design issues
- Helps to estimate final parts production costs
- Identify machinery/equipment/processes necessary for production
- Identify areas for improvement
- Assist with obtaining funding for your project
During the prototyping phase, we’re looking to optimize the part design, discover design errors, as well as optimize the “manufacturability” of your machined parts. What do I mean by “manufacturability”?
What Is Design For Manufacturability (DFM)?
Design for manufacturability (or DFM) is a step during the prototyping phase that has the goal of designing parts and assemblies that can be produced economically, efficiently and effectively.
By effectively, I mean producing machined parts that meet your intended requirements, and are designed to meet your reliability and performance standards. What factors affect the “manufacturability” of a part or assembly?
Factors That Affect Design For Manufacturability
- Part Design Complexity
- Part or Assembly Variants
- Material Selection and Availability
- Repeatability – Let’s future proof your design to avoid having to scrap the design in the future!
- How Production Friendly is Your Design?
This is a simplified list, but it gives you an idea of a few factors that we take into consideration while providing prototyping services.
This is where the team at Distinctive Manufacturing becomes your bridge to a successful manufacturing run. You know what your part or assembly needs to do from a functional standpoint.
What we do is help to make it a reality – to bridge the gap between your idea or concept and successfully manufacturing or machining your parts or assemblies.
Any good partner in machining or prototyping will have extensive knowledge and understanding of engineering, machining and manufacturing. Your manufacturing “tour guide” of sorts.
Using this knowledge, we’re able to balance your requirements with the production process to help ensure a successful outcome for you.
Factors like material selection, dimensional tolerances, secondary machining, intended use and manufacturing considerations are all taken into account. This also includes factoring in ways to limit waste (scrap).
What are the steps in prototyping? To be clear, no two projects are exactly the same. In general, these are steps that take place during the prototyping process:
STEPS IN PROTOTYPING
- Define your requirements. These should be as specific as possible.
- Design your part in a CAD program like SolidWorks or AutoCAD
- Build your prototype
Let’s pause here for a minute. During the prototype building phase, there are a number of avenues we can go down to build your prototype.
- CNC Mills - Using multiple axes of movement, CNC mills can be effective tools for building prototypes
- CNC Lathes - Often the ideal solution to create cylindrical parts
- Fabrication tools - Saws, brakes & shears, sheet metal processes, grinders and sanders, welding, drill press, etc.
- 3D Printing - Give us the ability to “fail fast”. Produce more than one design iteration and quickly change prototype designs.
OK, the prototype is built what next?
Now it’s time to evaluate the physical design. Examine, test, and gather feedback. Based on our evaluation and feedback, we may need to further refine your prototype.
Once we hit the finish line, it’s time to begin the manufacturing process of your new part or assembly!
Do you use, or are you in need of assistance with prototyping services? Looking for someone you can trust to provide you with quality prototyping assistance? At Distinctive Manufacturing, we’re creative thinkers, with a solid understanding of parts engineering and manufacturing.
We’d love the opportunity to help make your prototyping project a success!