Shaping Up

Some Aspects of New Product Development from an RP&M Viewpoint

Author Tony Sands

About the Author

Tony Sands has been associated with the RP&M industry for 20 years and was a founder committee member of one of the first associations to emerge.

Currently an active committee member of the present Rapid Prototyping and Manufacturing Association he is classed as a "Practitioner" of the technology in that his day to day work he is a consultant is heavily RP&M orientated.

This lightweight invited article is written both for fellow practitioners who may be able to identify with the situations described but more importantly for potential industrial users of RP&M who are thinking of testing the "Rapid" waters for the first time.

All the situations described are purely hypothetical and are not specific to any particular company or individual.

Introduction

First let us add words to the letters RP&M. They refer of course to Rapid Prototyping and Manufacturing in the context of taking a product/idea/component from CAD or paper concept through in the first instance to a real, solid shape using techniques such as:-

• Stereolithography SLA
• Laminated object manufacture LOM
• Fused disposition modelling FDM
• Selective laser sintering SLS
• Reverse engineering
• Rapid machining Plus other similar emerging technologies.

Having reached the stage where all or part or several parts of a product have been physically created by one or other of the above ingenious techniques, it is usual to apply conventional model-making and finishing skills to dress the part or parts into the form required depending on their intended function.

Then what you arrive at in most cases is a model of your product, the quality of which can vary from "The crown jewels" to "Something the dog chewed" depending on how skilfully the manual finishing techniques have been applied.

(1) If this model is later to be used as a master pattern for some subsequent tooling process the cosmetic quality and dimensional accuracies are vitally important and none of the existing RP techniques will achieve this as an outright result. The skill of today's pattern maker is paramount in achieving quality. It is a fact beyond dispute that the best models are still produced by the top echelon of pattern makers whether or not the starting point is an RP model.

This "RP" part of the industry is steadily developing as new materials and techniques yield parts with wider applications and specific physical properties such that they can be used in subsequent processes as :

A) Full simulation in of the final article.

Or B) In various ways as patterns.

Or C) In some cases as tools for other manufacturing processes.

The "M" or Manufacturing part of RP&M has at least two connotations:

Having indicated that the capital equipment is expensive, there are however several breeds of machines which address the concept of a relatively lower cost office-compatible 3D modeller which can be networked into a design office CAD system and used like a printer to produce concept shapes. No doubt this technology will grow in the future.

We have touched on prototyping and manufacturing but let us return to the word Rapid or to use the "shortened" version - Time Compression. (Not being an 'Einstein' I find good old real-time Rapid will do for me).

The inference in some interpretations of RP&M is that one should strive to do absolutely everything as fast as possible. This can often lead to counterproductive side effects such as exhaustion, frustration and the unnecessary expenditure of both energy and money.

The story comes to mind of the old bull and the young bull standing at the top of the hill admiring a heard of Jersey cows in the field below

"Lets race down the hill and have our wicked way with one of those cows" said the young bull.

"Nah," said the old bull "lets stroll down the hill and have our wicked way with all of 'em".

Getting the Design Right

In numerous experiences with Rapid projects over the years, particularly when they start running late, one is tempted to issue a sticker for the design office which states:

"Please take the time to get it right. There may not be time to put it right."

This might seem tough on the designer or project manager but Rapid should be viewed as an intrinsic property of certain techniques which, if applied appropriately, results in benefits during Product Development.

Rapid should not be used as an excuse to leave major practical aspects of a project until the last minute.

The product itself at the end of the day however is only as good as the design. Later in this article a table illustrates how the early use of RP can refine a design long before the "proverbial" hits the fan.

For the moment let us list the main sectors of activity, techniques and experience where a newcomer will find "practitioners" all beavering away in their respective workshops.

It is worth mentioning as a commercial plug for the RPMA at this stage that membership opens up free attendance to seminars and practical demonstrations in all of these sectors throughout the year.

Sectors 1 - 10

Sector 1. Pure research into materials and techniques.

Sector 2. Material and equipment suppliers for RP generation purposes.

Sector 3. Bureaux offering RP services from model creation through to replication in various forms of tooling.

Sector 4. Design houses with RP and model creation capability.

Sector 5. Software houses serving the CAD/CAM/STL Industry.

Sector 6. Large manufacturing companies with in house RP facilities.

Sector 7. Rapid machining facilities with CAD/CAM and reverse engineering.

Sector 8. Rapid tooling facilities with on going manufacturing capability.

Sector 9. New generation pattern/ model makers with in-depth appreciation of R P techniques.

Missing from the above list and from many other analyses published is the one category without which this new industry would not be emerging.

Sector 10. THE CLIENT who simply wants to create a new product.

Whereas to a practitioner of RP all of the above aspects blended together form the somewhat eclectic way of life that is RP&M, The Client may not even be on the same wavelength, for example:

A) He or she may only use RP for one new product every five years.

B) He or she may not require to know every detail of the process so long as the budgets/timescales and technical objectives are all met.

C) The Client may devolve responsibility to his design house/tool maker/moulder by simply defining the product conceptually or as a solid model in CAD and be prepared to simply pay for a result within a time frame.

It is not unusual nor is it an embarrassment for a significant proportion of first time clients discussing the creation of their new products via the Cellular Mouldings Rapid tooling and manufacture route to be unaware of the RP Industry and its many facets.

The RPMA together with the promoters of the SHAPE SHOW are seeking to assist in the educational process by providing a focus for technical help and advice linked once a year by the SHAPE SHOW, a forum for practitioners to exhibit their wares and services.

The Route to the Market

Trading wolf pelts for goose eggs goes back to cave dwellers and even trading at this basic survival level required invention and development of artefacts such as spears, arrows cooking implements and the tools used to facilitate their manufacture, all of which went through the same process of product development that we use today. From concept to market place the route remains the same and will do so into the next Millennium. RP is our relatively new and powerful tool for reducing time-to-market. All of the products which had to be developed employed specially contrived manufacturing processes all of which processes, in their own turn, found greater or lesser markets according to their effectiveness, cost, marketing and the technical demands made by product designers through the ages. Coming forward in History to the more sophisticated civilisations such as those of Egypt or Rome we find a plethora of evidence of Rapid Prototyping and Manufacturing techniques with moulds, castings, shaping and forming of metals ceramics and natural materials. Even Resins, slurries and waxes are evident, used in ways as innovative then as the stereolithography and tooling techniques of the 1990's. We can learn a lot from historical precedents but it is a fact human nature that we often choose not to and we blast off in a direction that leads to a bad attack of the "OS" syndrome (one of T.S.'s pet expressions and often evidenced in ill-founded RP&M exercises - the "Oh Sh** !" Syndrome)

Typical examples

OS the data was corrupt

OS we forgot the shrinkage factor

OS the chassis won't fit

OS we should have made the first RP model earlier

OS we overlooked the drop test

OS we forgot to put fillets and radii on the SLAs

OS the exhibition launch is next Tuesday

ET AL ......AD INFINITUM

OK Rapid Prototyped models and methods can sometimes seem expensive but relative to the advantages of having a product to look at and revise early in the programme they can often represent extremely good value. RP provides an insurance policy for designers and engineers who are willing to admit that sometimes they get it wrong.

Table of Typical Options

The table below is in the the form of an aide memoir and although the stages are generalised on a "mix 'n match" basis nevertheless it should be possible to define the status of a project at any time in the launch programme as for example:-

Example 1. By the time 1F is reached 2D should have enabled 3A to D to be completed.

Example 2. Alarm bells should ring for instance if stage 1F is apparently due on product-to -market time scale when exercise 2C has been left to the last minute and has just demonstrated that 3C is flagging up major problems.

And to make matters worse the Marketing Director has only just seen the model, doesn't like the aesthetics and wants to revisit 3A!!!!!!!!!!

Summary

Used effectively RP&M techniques can help steer a safer route to market.

Based on the experiences with many hundreds of Prototype to product exercises over the past

20 years the pitfalls remain the same and human nature is such that they will always be present.

The speed and usefulness of RP&M techniques however mean they can be identified and eliminated earlier in any development programme leading to a better product launched on time.

Acknowledgements

Tony Sands is grateful to Shape Magazine, the Promoters of the Shape Show and to the RPMA for the opportunity to submit this short article.

Also acknowledged are the relationships and shared experiences in the Industry between fellow Practitioners such as Styles, ARRK Formation, Ogle Design, IMI, Rapitypes, Martello, The University groups and Industrial RP users who participate in the activities of the RPMA and who like Cellular Mouldings are bench-marking the techniques and driving the technology ahead.

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