Get Physical: Physical Prototyping
HCID 521 Prototyping Studio | Week 8 | Assignment
This week we had a taste of well-made physical stuff: 3-D printing. A revolutionary invention, 3-D printing has changed our perspectives and methods of prototyping: it provides model prototyping a more efficient, precise, and reliable choice.
In this assignment, I would like to test whether a moveable object can be printed in 3-D printer at once or not, and I chose to do a toy car, which can also be used as desktop coins/receipts collector.
Not a beginner of CAD software, I had used Autodesk Inventor several times for our family business, which is machinery design and assembly. However, it was the first time for me to use Rhinoceros, the software we were introduced in class. Also, it is tough for me to sketch down fluid shapes since the components I’ve been working on were all for machineries, which are usually sharp lines and solid shapes with vertical angles.
I can see that 3-D printing can be used in prototypes that evaluating shapes and physical forms, which are different approaches from other methods previously introduced. Slower than making one by palastina, clay, or foam, the prototypes created by 3-D printer have advantages of precision and ability to modify design digitally. For prototyping, it is definitely changing and speeding up the process of industrial design (or other type of design that requires physical forms). I can see that once 3-D printing becomes more affordable and rapid enough, most of physical prototypes can be fully handled by 3-D printers.
