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Design Purrs

A collection of articles, insights, and trends on Design Innovation

Don't tell me, show me! – A Case for Rapid Prototyping

9/23/2021

1 Comment

 
"Interesting" is the word we often hear when telling others about our innovative ideas. Unfortunately, this is mostly the last thing we hear about it before it soon dissolves in the busyness of both working and personal lives. Unless formed, shaped, and colored, ideas by themselves are defenseless and mostly worthless. How can an idea be more than just "interesting"?
​Unless formed, shaped, and colored, ideas by themselves are defenseless and mostly worthless.
One way to get past the "interesting" point and get more attention is to make your audience 'feel' the idea. This is guaranteed to give you more of their attention for a longer time. Prototyping is the best way to have your audience feel your idea.
​
In a broad sense, a prototype is whatever can give your idea a visible/tangible form and/or feeling. This can be with simple drawings, 3D printed or virtual models, videos, interface mock-up, etc. Depending on your situation, a prototype does not have to be functional or attractive. However, building a prototype does require more investment and effort than to just speak of the idea.
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More Reasons for Why Prototyping:

Here are some reasons that can partially illustrate the power of prototypes:
  1. It is much more likely for people to remember a prototype than an idea.
  2. Prototypes are a stronger means of communicating your ideas compared to just speaking about them.
  3. Having a prototype indicates your seriousness to your audience. It shows that you have invested resources to produce that prototype.
  4. Going through making a prototype forces you to refine your idea to a clearer and more precise form to deliver to your audience.
  5. A prototype helps your audience imagine the impact your idea can bring.
Whether you pitch an idea to your management, investors, or teammates, having a prototype will increase your chances of taking your ideas to the next level. 

Everything is Prototype-able:

​Prototyping is becoming an essential and central practice working in design innovation. The shapes and forms of the prototypes can be very different depending on the field and purpose of the prototype. The commonality is that everything is prototype-able. For example, a user interface can be prototyped with a series of hand sketches on paper, an interactive dashboard can be prototyped with linked PowerPoints slides, a video advertisement can be prototyped with a cellphone camera, a physical product can be prototyped with 3D printing, etc. With that, it would be worth it to have rapid prototyping as a key part of your innovation processes. 
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In an earlier blog post, we discussed 3D Printing and product design and how prototyping can play an important role in the field. You can also check out the 3D Printing Opportunities and Applications course that dives even deeper into 3D printing for prototyping and other fields.
​
Do you use prototyping to support your ideas? What types of prototypes do you often build, and for what reasons? Share your thoughts in the comments section. 
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By Tayseer Almattar, TforDesign Founder

Tayseer is the founder of TforDesign.  He has a passion for learning design and making all learning digestible and exciting.  ​​
​
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tsjmattar/​
1 Comment

Additive Manufacturing (aka 3D Printing) and Product Design

10/28/2020

0 Comments

 
If I am to guess, you have most defiantly heard the term 3D Printing before. So, let us dig deeper into it. 3D Printing falls under the broader term Additive Manufacturing (AM). More specifically, the term 3D Printing is more commonly used to describe entry-level technologies that are low in cost and accessible to the average consumer. Hence, the term became more known to people outside that specific technical sphere. However, for our purposes, we can consider them interchangeable.  

​The term Additive Manufacturing only makes sense when contrasted with its more traditional counterpart Subtractive Manufacturing. In Subtractive Manufacturing, you start with lots of material; then, you remove from it until you reach your final product. For example, you can start with an aluminum block, then use a CNC machine to remove material to get a laptop chassis. Or you can start with sheet metal, then cut and form it to end up with a support bracket. In contrast, in Additive Manufacturing (AM), you would start from an empty canvas, then start adding materials to end up with your final product. For example, you would start from a blank canvas, then add layers to end up with a laptop chassis or a support bracket, or a turbine blade.  

About the Tech

Additive manufacturing has reached a good level of maturity with a wide variety of technologies. However, most of the technologies are more common for industrial use due to the machines' high cost and the required space, maintenance, and expertise to operate them. However, they mostly work using the same concept by adding layers of materials and solidifying them to a final shape. Materials can range from plastics, metals, paper, wax, sand, and composites. The following picture shows a 3D printed metal impeller.  ​​
3D printed metal impeller
3D printed metal impeller
The technologies that made it to consumer levels are: 
  • Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), which is the most common 
  • Stereolithography (SLA) 
  • Digital Light Processing (DLP)  
The rest have mostly remained confined to industrial use. The following figure highlights the different 3D printing technologies currently available. Pictures and red rectangles are for technologies that are more available at the consumer level.  ​
Additive manufacturing technology introduction
Map of the current AM technologies

Why use Additive Manufacturing (AM) in Product Design

As of now, Product Design applications represent the most prominent usage of Additive Manufacturing. This both in the Product Development Stage as well as the Product Production Stage. Let us talk briefly about those two stages.  ​​

Product Development Stage:

Within the product development stage, AM has three main advantages:  

  1. Accelerate time to market: AM enables you to manufacture products in demand instantly. Thus, the testing process is much quicker as you will quickly test and inspect iterations on a daily basis. Overall, this will decrease the time it takes to get to market.  
  2. Cheaper product development cycle: this, in part, relates to the first point as well. Both less time and rapid testing end up resulting in a cheaper product development cycle. Also, producing a small number of testing prototypes units with AM is generally cheaper than conventional methods.  
  3. Meeting consumer demands in a better way: If you are designing and producing products for clients, rapid prototyping and testing enables you to have more thoughtful discussions with your customers about the product at hand. This will naturally allow you to meet their needs in a better way.  

Product Production Stage:

The advantages AM brings for the product development cycle are more known and utilized than the Production Stage. In the Product Development stage, AM has two main advantages. Being able to produce custom products and complex geometries. 

1. Custom Products

AM enables you to produce unique, custom products on a small scale. For plastic-based applications, Injection Molding is the traditional counterpart for Additive Manufacturing. Both methods can produce plastic products, but the cost models are very different. The figure below highlights the difference in cost between Additive Manufacturing and Injection Molding. Additive manufacturing has a fixed cost per unit, while injection molding has a variant one that decreases the more you produce a product. This makes additive manufacturing great to create custom products on a smaller scale.  ​
Cost for traditional injection molding vs AM
Cost for traditional injection molding vs AM

2. Complex Geometries

AM enables you to produce products that are not possible traditional methods. This can be especially the case with metal products where the traditional counterpart is Subtractive Manufacturing. Due to its nature, AM technologies can enable the creation of internal structures that are otherwise impossible to make with traditional methods. The figure highlights a part structure that is only possible with Additive Manufacturing.  ​
AM enable the production of complex geometries
AM enable the production of complex geometries
The scope of AM is much wider than what is described in this article. Besides the direct product design applications, AM can bring lots of unique advantages to other technical areas like supply chain and tooling. So, regardless of which area you are work in, you should keep an eye on AM and ways it can support your business.  

​Have you ever used AM/3D Printing before? What did you use it for? Share your experience with us in the comments. Also, what else would you like to know about the world of Additive Manufacturing?  
 
If you enjoyed this article, do not forget to share it with your networks.  

*If you are looking to learn 3D modeling for 3D Printing, check out 
the TforDesign school, which offers a range of online 3D modeling courses on SOLIDWORKS,portfolio building, and sustainability. 
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By Tayseer Almattar, TforDesign Founder

Tayseer is the founder of TforDesign. He has a passion for learning design and making all learning digestible and exciting.  ​​
​
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tsjmattar/​
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    The following blogs are written by TforDesign team and community members. ​

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