Industrial design Prototyping

Why is Industrial design important?

1.    We live in an era of consumption where supply is so vast and differentiated that you can easily find two identical products if you judge by their specifications. That is where Industrial Design comes on stage. When technical parameters are really close, people start choosing the product that suits their tastes better, feels better, has better proportions and so on. That is even more viable when we talk about gadgets and appliances.  Well, for some people, design is even more important than technical parameters. That is why industrial design plays a large role in product success or, unfortunately, failure.

 Prototyping for industrial design

Development of digital technologies in the recent decade has considerably lowered the popularity of prototyping for industrial design. And really, why bother, when you can create the whole part or even the assembly on your PC without the need to cooperate and order a physical product or make it yourself. Designing has seemingly become much easier. However, that is not completely true. Sure, 3D-modelling is fast, doesn’t require any materials and you can even analyze and correct the mistakes you’ve made without any considerable loss. But digital products do not give us the whole picture. For example, you can’t correctly judge the scale of your product and its elements. If that is not done, do not be surprised when your product does not fit into your hand (If it is handheld, of course) or if some part of it sticks out by being too big or too small. In some cases, problems may be so dire that the product, having made the transition from the digital world into our own, may not work altogether. Such things may happen when the product is made from sheet metal. Depending on the sheet width, it may buckle under its own weight or be so heavy, that you’ll need to make it for two clients to carry and not just one. That is why making prototypes is so important and most serious companies male prototypes or mock-ups of their products to optimize them for consumers.

How major companies use prototypes. Some examples and benefits

If we want to understand the advantages of prototypes, we should refer to the most successful companies and look at the ways they achieve advantages through the usage of prototypes. Let’s start with Apple. The IPhone and IPad designs they initially make for a new model are numerous and very different in size and style. What is different about them compared to other smartphone manufacturers is that they make mockup models of all the phone designs and tinker with them. They change proportions to make the phone sit better in your hand, they move the buttons around and what is the result? A very ergonomic convenient and stylish design. As a result, most other smartphones have a similar case but the original idea still belongs to Apple. It is known that Google started using prototypes for their products too, following the example of Apple. In some cases, you just can’t avoid making a prototype, for example, in turbine industry, you have to make different calculations of the way gas will move through the turbine blades. That is most often done using Finite Element Analysis and 3D-modelling using meshes. However, the models that are used there cannot take all the factors into account. That is why after designing a turbine blade, a physical prototype of it has to be tested and its performance verified. Only through the use of prototypes can we enjoy safe and stable flights and energy production.

New methods of Making Prototypes

Well, conventional methods of making prototypes have existed since the birth of prototypes themselves. And what could be more logical? You have designed a product and you make a couple of fully functional prototypes and you test both the design and the manufacturing technology. This method is the most thorough one. You can test the technology, the design, and the functionality. However, modern industry nomenclature is changing at a rapid rate. Products can come and go to be changed by new ones in less than a year. The company that has the smallest product lead time wins the market. That is why making a fully functional prototype is often not viable, especially considering newer product versions when the general functionality has already been established and is just upgraded in some of its aspects. Thus, mockup models were made. Their advantage is such that you only make the outer carcass and test it. Convenient, isn’t it? You only order some company to cast you a plastic model or for someone to mill you a metal one on a CNC center. Well, prototyping has come one more step ahead. So-called Rapid Prototyping managed to decrease the prototype manufacturing time even further. The main technology here is Additive Manufacturing, a very popular innovative method of layer-by-layer sintering of different materials. Its main advantage is flexibility. You basically need no additional equipment or tools apart from a 3D printer and stock material. If you make a plastic prototype, you don’t even need to mind technology that much. The software of commercial printers is usually so advanced that it forms sintering trajectories all by itself, thereby no technological 

preparations are needed and they take most of the time when making a prototype. It should also be noted that the quality of Additively manufactured parts has risen drastically. Some of the plastic parts, made by SLA-printers for example, have the surface finish that of a plastic mold. Some printers can even make colored prototypes. If we talk about metal printing, progress here is also notable, as SLM-printers can now produce parts with tolerances up to 0.016 mm which is fairly good and enough for a lot of parts when we consider precision.

Conclusion

To summarize the whole article, 3D-modelling is very important in industrial design and it has a lot of benefits when we consider flexibility, analysis and visualization, however, if you are aiming to make a truly outstanding product, 3D-modelling is not enough. In order to judge the scale, rigidity, and size of your product ideally, you have to make a prototype.  Recent technological developments come to our aid here, allowing us the use of Additive Manufacturing, a layer-by-layer sintering technology. It provides designers a rapid and profitable way to make prototypes and further reduce the lead time of the product.