Speed and cost are essential considerations in product development. 3D printing has become increasingly useful as a way to produce prototypes under the dual pressures of time and money. We interviewed Fred Kaplan, Western US sales manager of Additive at Arburg, Inc., to get his view of efficient and effective prototype development.

Arburg is a German company that manufactures plastic processing machines. The company uses industrial additive manufacturing and robotic systems to provide customer and industry-specific turnkey solutions.

Fred Kaplan: Definitely! Manufacturers are doing everything they possibly can to speed up design cycles. We are in a market now where products need to make it to market as quickly as possible. Venture capitalists are counting on that, so additive manufacturing of prototypes has become essential, and pretty much everyone is doing it. The alternative would be injection molding or some other production-scale process and, even with aluminum prototype tools, this can be extremely time-consuming and expensive. For example, we talked to a company that was spending $50,000 to make seven variations of a new-product prototype using injection-molding tooling. We estimated that switching to additive manufacturing would save 90% of those development costs. So, not only does additive manufacturing speed up development, but it is also very cost-effective.

Posted By: Logo Design Dubai UAE