Rapid Prototyping - An overview of the present state-of-the-art

Due to the world-wide competitive situation, interest in new methods,business practices and technologies to improve and accelerated product development have increased continuously over the last few years. Production benefits in industry have been obtained with such techniques as simultaneous engineering and total quality management and CAD, CAM, CAE and NC technologies. In product development, Rapid prototyping (RP) and Rapid Product Development (RPD) have turned out to be the instruments to save time and money and develop innovative products. Beginning in the late 1970's new technologies have been developed aimed at improving and hastening the manufacturing time of prototypes, contrary to, other automated fabrication technologies in use, the basic principle of these new technologies is an additive process, where a conventional automated prototyping normally uses subtractive processes such as NC milling or grinding. in a period of only few years Rapid Prototyping has changed from a number of inaccurate technologies widely met with a pitying smile, to a mighty significant tool. Now it is hard not to imagine that it is not used in the automotive industry and related branches. Nowadays, R&D activities on Rapid prototyping are located ata large number of Universities and research centers and the number of additive fabrications is still increasing, even if most processes have still not been commercialize. The object of this paper is to give an over view of the present state-of-the art, commercial technologies, R&D activities and trends in Rapid prototyping. This paper also discuss about system selection of Rapid Prototyping.