Not so long ago all processes that are automated now have been implemented manually. The costs of such production were very high, because quite a big stuff was needed to fulfill the work fast and in time. Of course, it made any technological process very long lasting and imperfect, but who could know that times were coming, when manual work would be considered as something old-fashioned and unprofitable.
The production of the models and mockups has been used since the times, when different technical appliances were released in the market. It was necessary to create models of constituent parts of planes, autos, trains, machines used in different industries and by different enterprises. It can be explained by the necessity to test this or that part of an engine, for example, which could disable the work of the whole mechanism. To avoid problem with production of a new, redone lots of some merchandise it was urgent to test the part in order to detect all advantages and disadvantages of a product. It was the time, when creation of prototyping models became inevitable. The materials used in the past were not solid enough, which is why prototyping models were mostly demonstrative. People which created these prototypes manually had to spend weeks and sometimes months, working on their workplaces to create accurate models. Nevertheless, cases when finished model corresponded to the real objects were single. The technology required improvements and designers from all over the world began to work out prototyping machines that could create prototyping models faster and more accurate than before. The firs prototyping machine was represented in 1988 in Detroit by Chuck Hull, whose main specialization were photosensitive polymers. It was a stereo lithographic apparatus or SLA. Stereo lithography apparatus uses a special laser to coat one thin layer of liquid photopolymer at the free surface of a vat. It was a revolution in the world of prototyping, that could be difficult to imagine before mostly due to the cheapness of this technology comparing to the manual work that was used before. The second advantage of the invention was a substantial economy of time that gave the final name to the rapid prototyping. Nevertheless the word ‘rapid’ has relative meaning because despite all improvements, the process of model prototyping can take up to a week. Such term is explained by the active testing of a finished model and feedback with customers that helps to detect all minuses of a product and to improve them. That is the main reason why several models of one and the same object can be created within the project. Rapid prototyping is not only another useful technological innovation, but also a great step forward in prototyping, which is hard to iterate.

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Tags: prototyping, rapid prototype