Rapid Prototyping

In the manufacturing arena, productivity is achieved by guiding a product from concept to market quickly and inexpensively. In most of the industries physical models called prototypes are invariably prepared and subjected to various tests as part of the design evaluation process. Conventional prototyping may take weeks or even months, depending on the method used. Therefore people thought of developing processes that would directly give the physical prototype from the CAD model without going through the various manufacturing steps. This led to the development of a class of processes that are known as Rapid prototyping.Rapid prototyping automates the fabrication of a prototype part from a three-dimensional (3D) CAD drawing. Rapid prototyping can be a quicker, more cost-effective means of building prototypes as opposed to conventional methods.