Manufacturers Find Competitive Edge in Prototyping

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Jan 05, 2012, 10:15 ET

MENOMONEE FALLS, Wis., Jan. 5, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The sluggish economy has claimed many casualties, but innovation is not one of them. To remain competitive, manufacturers have had to improve processes, increase efficiency and reduce costs. Fortunately, this has not always meant eliminating or outsourcing jobs. Sometimes it has meant embracing technology.

Prototyping, or the ability to produce a part or product directly from an electronic file, is a case in point. Prototyping enables manufacturers to tighten production cycles and trim budgets. As a leading medical manufacturer recently learned, prototyping can be used to quickly and effectively validate products, speeding time to market.

The company wanted to get a new product into production, but the design, which included four very complex acrylic parts, had to be validated. Under normal circumstances, the validation process would have been delayed weeks while the parts were manufactured to the exacting standards of the medical industry.

"Our customer came to us with a problem: How do we produce these very complex parts within 24 hours," says Michael Esser, Jr., JR Prototypes General Manager. "The design validation needed to be completed and it hinged upon the rapid development of these intricate parts. Using normal manufacturing processes, it couldn't be done. Prototyping made the difference."

Using the company's FDM (fused deposition modeling) equipment, JR Prototypes was able to produce parts directly from the customer's CAD files and ship them complete in 24 hours. The design validation was completed as scheduled and the product entered production.

"With prototyping, we can provide a rapid response that enables manufacturers to go from concept to finished part in a timeframe that would have been unthinkable in the past," says Esser. "Agility like this can shave weeks off of a production schedule and save tens of thousands of dollars."

In bad times and good, this is a competitive advantage that manufacturers can't afford to overlook.

About JR Prototypes
JR Prototypes specializes in rapid prototyping and short-run production. The facility, which is located in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, serves customers throughout the Midwest. JR Prototypes is a division of the Dielectric Corporation which is a single source solution for parts and assemblies fabricated from thermosets, thermoplastics, aluminum, brass, copper and stainless steel.

www.dielectriccorp.com

SOURCE Dielectric Corporation