At Inventionland, we are familiar with prototyping, in particular, rapid prototyping. As time goes on, rapid prototyping is becoming more and more common in the production process for companies in manufacturing, designing and engineering.
At their core, prototypes are an important piece to the invention process because they allow a person to see their invention idea in physical form.
Furthermore, 3D-printed prototypes give way for a more realistic design and idea of what the final product will look like. Mcor Technologies is well-versed in the 3D printing and prototyping business and they weighed in on the value of 3D printing in the prototype world.
Julie Reece, a writer for Mcor Technologies, talked about this subject and said, “The value of a 3D printed model or prototype is directly proportionate to how accurate and realistic it is – whether it be a tool or shoe prototype in preparation for manufacturing; a model of a client’s villa prior to construction; a replica of a patient’s skull in preparation for an operation; a map model to assist first responders in a natural disaster; or a 3D printed figurine of your child to capture a precious moment in time.”
As you can see, Mcor places a large emphasis on creating prototypes that look so authentic that they could be mistaken for the real thing.
In fact, Mcor Technologies recently posted an article about a prototype that was so realistic, it was stopped by airport security. The best part of this story is that the prototype was made entirely of paper!
The story goes a little something like this: One of Mcor’s sales managers was traveling with a 3D-printed paper prototype of a hammer. This prototype was made with Mcor’s IRIS printer (more on that later). While at airport security, the 3D-printed hammer prototype was in the sales manager’s luggage. Well, it wasn’t long before airport security spotted the hammer, removed it and then continued to tell the sales manager that these types of tools were not allowed on board of an aircraft. After telling security that it was, in fact, a paper prototype, they were in disbelief that what they once thought was a real hammer was actually 3D-printed out of paper! The only thing that gave it away was the obvious difference in weight, being that the paper hammer was considerably lighter than a real hammer.
Now, this prototype wouldn’t be around if it weren’t for Mcor’s famous IRIS paper-based 3D printer. Mcor Tech’s printer utilizes a process called selective deposition lamination that bonds together layers of standard office paper into durable, eco-friendly models.
The “ink” for this printer is actually paper, which can be printed in every color under the sun using Mcor’s International Colour Consortium that has over one million color shades!
At Inventionland, we can definitely relate to Mcor when we say that rapid prototyping continues to pack a lot of power in the invention process.
Copyright Inventionland 2014
Sources:
https://www.inside3dp.com/mcor-prototypes-real-theyre-stopped-airport-security/
Images:
https://www.3dheights.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/iris_printer.png
