Have you ever walked into a hotel lobby looking for a snack and proceeded to grab a piece of fruit from a bowl, only to find out that the fruit is decoration and not an edible piece of fruit? Artificial fruit arrangements can be difficult to differentiate from the actual product, so difficult in fact that you may have even tried to take a bite. You were probably expecting a complimentary and delicious snack, but instead, you got a mouthful of Styrofoam. From the time that it buds on a tree, a real apple can take some time to grow; a phony apple, on the other hand, takes only a few seconds to manufacture in a factory, a much quicker turnaround.
The concept of Rapid prototyping is very similar to the idea of decorative fruit. A fake apple looks and feels like a real apple, but it is missing one key distinction, functionality. In the same way, a silicone prototype product can be rapidly manufactured to look and feel the way that a finish product would. But what are the benefits of creating a prototype over a finished product?
Imagine you are designing a specific keypad for a certain project and you need to ensure that it is exactly the way you envisioned it in your head. Sketches and computer-generated models are helpful, but there is nothing like holding the product in your own two hands. Rapid prototyping gives you the ability to get a sense of the product by creating a detailed model that is up to 95% accurate to that of the finished product. By creating a prototype, you have the ability to explain your idea to others using a physical model; additionally, you can make changes to your product design after seeing the physical rendition.
Even though a fake apple can’t give you the mouth-watering satisfaction of a real apple, it still gives you a very close sense of what an apple is like – sans functionality. Rapid prototyping is useful for industries from Medical to Military, Aeronautics to Automotive, and everything in between. In the last year, prototyping has been used to create a vast array of innovative new products, and with rapid silicone prototyping from SiTECH, yours’ could be next! Give us a call at 757-887-8488 to learn more about how rapid prototyping can provide a cost-effective solution for your business needs.
