Coming up with a totally new product is not as easy as having your ideas produced and selling them in the market. You have to go through a lot of different processes to have it approved for selling. One process which eats up most of our time is making a product prototype. After having created the product in our minds, we have to make a realistic sketch of it to give the person who will be making the prototype a clearer idea of what prototype he has to come up with. After sketching, we then start molding the prototype. The entire prototyping process does not only take most of our time but it takes most of our budget and effort as well.
Today, with the existence of a more modern technology, we can now create a prototype more rapidly than doing it manually. There are several types of a rapid prototyping process. One is 3D printing. 3D printing as a rapid prototyping process is done with the help of a computer. After you have done your brainstorming and plotting it on a 3D application in your computer, you will simply have to print it. Printing in a 3D printer gives quite a unique product. Your idea will not be printed in a piece of paper but rather it will be printed in plastic exactly the way that you have had it in the 3D application.
3D printing as a rapid prototyping process gives plastic prototypes as a result. It is able to print your idea exactly the way you had it drawn in the 3D application and it is also able to demonstrate its functions exactly as you have described it.
Most plastic prototypes today are no longer manually molded. They are already products of 3D printing as a rapid prototyping process. The process is currently widely used because it is very affordable and gives a lot quicker results without sacrificing the accuracy of the prototype. It is also a lot easier to do because it only takes a few clicks on your computer to have a prototype completed from sketching it through having it printed.
The 3D printing process allows us to rapidly make plastic prototypes to stop delaying us from releasing our products in the market just because we fail to come up with a good prototype to have it proven and tested.