Increase Speed to Market With Rapid Prototype Investment Casting
Getting functional metal prototypes into your customer’s hands in the shortest possible puts you on track to win new business. There are many ways of producing sample parts, but one that’s sometimes overlooked is rapid prototype investment casting.
What Is Rapid Prototype Investment Casting?
Rapid prototype investment casting combines the advantages of the casting process with modern prototyping techniques. Simply put, it leads to better sample parts and improves your company’s speed to market.
Rapid prototype investment casting offers a much quicker way of making parts. The casting mold is made by coating a wax or polymer pattern with a ceramic shell, a process that takes just a few hours, (followed by thorough drying.)
Additionally, instead of utilizing injection molding, rapid prototyping utilizes an additive process, sometimes called 3D printing, to produce patterns that are needed to create the prototypes.
Overall, this method cuts the time to produce metal parts from weeks or months to a matter of days.
Why Speed to Market Matters
There’s nothing like putting a physical part in someone’s hands; they can feel it, study it from different angles, see if it will fit, and perhaps even use it for functional testing. If it’s not exactly what they were expecting, at least it provides a basis for discussing refinements.
The quicker you get that part to them, the sooner they can either give you the go-ahead, or request changes. That gives you an advantage over less nimble competitors. It lets you cycle through more design iterations in less time and get to market quicker (which may earn you higher margins.) If your customer builds the parts you supply into their final product, faster prototyping helps them accelerate their development work and product launches.
Rapid Prototyping Techniques
The main 3D printing processes for rapid prototype investment casting are stereolithography (SLA), fused-deposition-modeling (FDM), and selective laser sintering (SLS). Each one builds a part layer by layer, but they have significant differences.
SLA
SLA entails selectively curing liquid polymers in a tank. The process starts with a very thin layer which is cured, often by UV light, before more liquid is added. This is cured again, and so on until the solid part has been created.
FDM
In FDM, a polymer is extruded through a nozzle and laid down as a bead of material. Successive layers are put down on top of one another to build the part.
SLS
Lastly, SLS resembles a screen printing process. A laser scans over a thin layer of powder, selectively fusing the particles together. The bed of the machine then lowers and a new layer of powder is deposited. The laser scans over this, again selectively fusing the particles, and the process continues until the part is ready.
Advantages of Rapid Prototyping
In addition to increasing a company’s speed to market, rapid prototyping also offers other advantages, including:
- Easier to Upgrade & Refine the Product Design
- Reduces Product Defects
- Lowers Production Costs
- Decreases Overall Lead Time
Increase Your Speed to Market With Help from Barron Industries
If you need to get new products to market or new parts in your customer’s hands, you understand the benefits of moving fast. So does Barron Industries. We cast and machine ferrous and nonferrous metals for customers in the most demanding industries. With expertise in both rapid prototyping and investment casting, we have the ability to produce functional prototype parts in less time than you would expect.
For more information about our services, or to request a quote, please contact us today.