If your company develops a creative design, without any doubt, you would then put efforts into transforming the design into a realistic product, marketing it, and making considerate profits out of it. But what happens if your design is wrong or not attractive on the markets? A well-executed bad idea is a big waste of time, energy, as well as money. Therefore, with so much at stake, it is critical to verify your design. But how? Go to 3D prototyping factory and make some prototypes.

What is a prototype?

A prototype is an experimental model of an idea or a design. It allows you to test the rationality, effectiveness, and marketability of an idea or design before fully executing it, thus reducing the risks. The prototype sets a direction for designers or R&D experts, enabling them to rapidly iterate their idea or design to get a final product that will present the maximum value for whoever will use it. The prototype plays an important role in the progress of product development. The high-fidelity 3D prototypes that look and work the same as the final products can effectively guide new products through a series of validation stage toward mass production.

Many companies, when they have a newly developed product, in order to minimize the risk, they often make the prototypes first. The prototypes can give them real-world testing, analysis, and feedback from experts, users, and their targeted customers. In this way, they can execute quick and correct revisions and improvements in design accordingly. Ultimately, prototyping helps companies get a better product and release it faster to win the competitive advantage.

There are many prototype manufacturing techniques on the market. Here, we are going to introduce one of these techniques - 3D prototyping.

Why is 3D prototyping?

It is the utilization of 3D printing technology to quickly manufacturing makeshift proof-of-concept prototypes by adding material layer-by-layer. With this prototyping method, designers and engineers can more quickly and more cost-effectively turn their ideas or CAD designs into realistic proofs. It helps the verification and improvement of product design, shortening the product development cycle, and reducing costs.

Today, with the rapid development of 3D printing technology, the advantages of 3D printing over the traditional mold making technologies, such as CNC machining and injection molding have become more evident. More companies in a variety of industries are embracing the 3D printing rapid prototyping service. Here are some advantages:

1. Shorter Production Cycle

For most new product developments, it is rare to end with the first prototype. Instead, an extensive process of testing and changes has to go through before the finalization of the design. Before the mature development of 3D printing technology, it would take weeks to manufacture a prototype. Every time a change was made, another few weeks were added. It significantly prolonged the cycle and increased the cost of product development. The mature of 3D printing technology significantly changed the situation. The changes can be made by updating the product’s CAD file. The 3D printer can create many iterations of the design according to the amended file in a very short time. A 3D prototyping factory can design a mold, manufacture it in-house on a professional 3D printer, test and inspect it, within only a few days, sometimes even less. The speedy of 3D printing means that shorter lead times and smaller MOQ (or no) are offered at a 3D prototyping factory. It can then benefit customers to develop a new product more quickly and economically.

If you are cautious in product design and will not easily finalize it until a series of rigorous testing and verifications passed, it is one of the best ways to speed this process up while maintaining lower cost.

2. Higher Cost-effectiveness

Compared to other mold-making techniques such as injection molding and CNC machining, 3D prototyping is much more cost-effective. The injection molding and CNC machining not only require a large number of expensive machines but also need professional and experienced staff to run, supervise, and maintain the machines, which means higher labor cost. Unlike these two methods, 3D printing only needs several sets of 3D printer. The 3D printer is almost fully automated and much easier to operate. The price of running 3D printers is much lower. Generally, due to the high cost of each production run of CNC machining and injection molding, larger MOQ and a higher price are set by the 3D prototyping factory.

For customers needing a small quantity of mold, 3D prototyping could be the best option as far as cost-effectiveness is concerned.

3. Greater Competitive Advantages to Customers

Because of the speed and lower costs of 3D prototyping, customers can get the newly developed product through the verification stage into the mass production and launching on the market in a shorter amount of time. 3D prototype also allows the physical demonstration of a new product in the exhibitions to gain attention from customers and ensure efficient communication.

With 3D prototypes, you can do the market testing, constantly modify the product design, and develop the most competitive new product without facing large upfront expenditure of prototyping.

For businesses looking to move new products to market quickly to be more competitive on the market, 3D printing is an essential technology.

4. High Quality and More Flexible Materials Choices

The nature of 3D printing is producing the prototype from the ground up layer by layer. Each process is monitored easily, allowing errors to be caught in real-time, reducing the overall number of defective molds and wasted materials. 3D printing guarantees finer and more consistent quality of the prototypes produced. Moreover, as the rapid development of 3D printing technology, there is a wider range of 3D printer types on the market today. The 3D prototyping factory will provide a wide selection of materials, including ABS, resin, polycarbonates, and even nylon for customers to choose from.

5. Sustainability

3D printing has a less environmental impact. It uses only the materials it needs when layer by layer is added, which means much fewer materials waste. And there is no need to run an energy-consuming 3D prototyping factory that is equipped with large machines.

The more prototypes you build and test, the better your design you will. 3D printing rapid prototyping ensures the cost-effective and fast iterations of your design. Are you ready to investing in 3D printing rapid prototyping to speed up your company’s new product development cycle and put your business on the fast track to success? If you are ready, then move to the next step - find a reliable and capable 3D prototyping factory.

Why Partner With Tuowei?

1. Increased 3D prototyping capabilities

3D printing has always been a great technology for rapid prototyping and product development. Tuowei, who has specialized in prototyping for over 17 years, immediately saw the value this could provide to customers’ success and launched the 3D printing service many years ago.

In these years, we have invested a lot in improving our 3D printing capacity to deliver faster turnaround (within a week, usually) and more cost-effectiveness. With Tuowei, manufacturing complex designs become a breeze. For features like lattices, hollow bodies that are hard or expensive to produce with other prototyping methods, Tuowei’s advanced 3D printing technology can do it fast and economically. Here, whether you are looking to quickly iterate prototypes to get a better design, create molds for presentation in the exhibitions, or produce a small-to-medium quantity of custom replacement parts for supporting your existing products, we offer you the best 3D prototyping solutions.

2. More Reasonable & Competitive Price

At Tuowei, we offer price more competitive to most competitors. Our pricing is based on the volume of your order. And we set no MOQ and charge a minimum price per ordered piece. If you order two or more copies of a model, the unit price automatically goes down because that the preparation and production of multiple copies are more efficiently.

3. High Quality Commitment

Tuowei is an ISO9001-certified 3D prototyping factory with over 17 years of manufacturing experience. We use the best professional 3D printers to manufacture your prototypes and parts, with only one thing in mind: to offer you the best 3D printing service. Here, the models are printed layer by layer. After a layer is printed, a new layer is spread over the surface evenly. We have a QC team to monitor the process to detect the error in real-time and inspect the quality after production. We guarantee the highest quality from each of our state-of-the-art 3D printing process and printing techniques.

In addition, molds made from some materials, such as polyamide, will show discoloration and turn slightly yellowish over time. In this case, we will recommend choosing a colored technique, such as dyeing, paint spraying to ensure the long-lasting beauty of your molds. Of course, we have developed excellent techniques in coloring, thanks to over 17 years of practices.

4. Personalized & Attentive Service

Tuowei manages the entire 3D prototyping workflow. Upload your CAD file in any format, you help with the file analysis and repair, file optimization, and give you feedback promptly. You won’t wait for hours to get your quote. Our price and turnaround will be provided as soon as the confirmation of design. Materials, finishes, sizes, quantity turnaround time options, shipping plans...there are many options to help you to get the good price and meet your budget.

In general, at Tuowei, most of our 3D printing orders are shipped with a week. But to cater to more and more businesses requesting a faster way to get a 3D mold, we can offer priority service. If you are dealing with deadlines, contact our customer service. You will 3D print your design within five days or less.

5. Continuous Improvement

At Tuowei, 3D printing means creation. Every day, we see the potential growth of 3D printing technology. Even though we have over 17 years of experience in this field, we are continuously striving for the improvement of our 3D printing quality and service.

In Conclusion

Tuowei is committed to providing designers and businesses in a variety of industries, including plastic, electronics, aerospace, automotive, and more, a leading 3D prototyping service by large-scale 3D printing capacities, state-of-the-art technology, and the extensive know-how accumulated these past 17 years. We meet our customers’ needs with the highest quality possible and make it easy and efficient to develop new products.

At Tuowei, you get design flexibility, durable and high-fidelity 3D molds, and greatly reduced lead time and costs to speed up your new product development and win the market. What are you waiting for?

Get a quote in 24 hours or less or order 3D prototypes right away by contacting our customer service. All you need to give us is a CAD file! We will handle the rest and ship your order in a week.