Basic knowledge of industrial prototype

One What is a blackboard?

In the process of product design, after we have completed the design drawings, one of the most important things we want to do is to know what kind of things we design are made into real objects, whether the appearance is consistent with our own design ideas, whether the structural design is reasonable, and so on. Prototype manufacturing is the product of this demand. Generally speaking, a prototype is one or several templates made according to the product appearance and structure drawings to check the appearance or structure rationality and function without mold opening. On the other hand, with the increasingly fierce social competition, the speed of product development has gradually become the main contradiction in the competition, and prototype manufacturing can effectively improve the speed of product development. It is in this case that the prototype manufacturing industry has come to the fore and has become a relatively independent industry and flourished.

Two Classification of prototype:

Due to the limitations of various conditions, the early prototype was mainly shown in that most of its work was completed manually, which made the prototype long in duration and difficult to strictly meet the size requirements of the appearance and structural drawings, so the function of checking the appearance or structural rationality was also greatly reduced. With the progress of science and technology, the rapid development of CAD and CAM technology has provided a better means of technical support for the prototype manufacturing industry, making the precision and production speed of the prototype more and more high.

Three According to the means of production, the hand board can be divided into manual hand board and numerical control hand board:

1) Handicraft: the main work is done by hand. At present, it is mainly concentrated in toys and dolls and other occasions with low dimensional accuracy requirements but strong artistry.

2) NC prototype: its main workload is completed by NC machine tools, and it can be divided into RP (Rapid Prototyping) prototype and CNC (Machining Center) prototype according to the different equipment used. A: RP prototype: mainly produced by laser rapid prototyping technology. B: CNC prototype: mainly produced by machining centers.

Compared with CNC hand boards, RP hand boards have their own advantages: the advantages of RP hand boards are mainly shown in their rapidity and complex surfaces (such as chamfered surfaces), which are mainly formed by stacking technology. As a result, RP hand boards are generally relatively rough, and have certain requirements on the wall thickness of products. For example, if the wall thickness is too thin, they cannot be produced. The advantage of CNC hand board is that it can accurately reflect the information expressed in the drawings, and the surface quality of CNC hand board is high, especially after the completion of surface spraying and silk screen printing, even the products produced after opening the mold are more brilliant. Therefore, CNC prototype manufacturing has increasingly become the mainstream of the prototype manufacturing industry.

Four Of course, CNC prototype also has its shortcomings:

1) As mentioned above, toy dolls are difficult in software design, and few people master this technology; In terms of hardware, it is difficult to fully process it with three axes at one time, and it must be processed in blocks. Rapid prototyping can completely process a complex doll.

2) As the prototype manufacturing industry involves more and more industries, such as interior and exterior decorative parts, automotive lamps, car models, etc. in the automotive industry, these products need more than two positioning processing, and the car shell of car models even needs to be processed in six sides. For this, CNC machining requires multiple positioning, and path processing also needs to be processed step by step, which is prone to errors. On the other hand, rapid prototyping can process all the faces with one input of data. Handboards can be divided into plastic and metal ones according to the materials used for production. Handboards can be divided into plastic and metal ones according to the materials used for production. Plastic prototype: The raw material is plastic, mainly the prototype of some plastic products, such as TV, monitor, telephone, etc. Metal hand board: Its raw materials are aluminum magnesium alloy and other metal materials, mainly hand boards for some high-end products. Such as laptop, advanced player, MP3 player, etc.

Five Necessity of making prototype:

1) Inspect the appearance design: the prototype is not only visual, but also touchable. It can directly reflect the designer’s creativity in the form of real objects, avoiding the disadvantage of “beautiful painting but not beautiful making”. Therefore, prototype production is essential in the process of new product development and product shape elaboration.

2) Inspection of structural design: because the hand board can be assembled, it can directly reflect the rationality of the structure and the difficulty of installation. It is convenient to find and solve problems as early as possible.

3) Avoid the risk of directly opening the mold: because the cost of mold manufacturing is generally high, the relatively large mold price is between 100000 and several million yuan. If the structure is unreasonable or other problems are found in the process of opening the mold, the loss can be imagined. However, the loss can be avoided and the mold opening risk can be reduced by making the prototype first and then confirming it.

4) The launch time is far ahead of schedule: due to the advanced production of the prototype, you can use the prototype to promote the product before the mold is developed, and even the early sales and production preparations to occupy the market as early as possible.

5) Small batch production and assembly are directly carried out by hand, and the products for trial sale are modified through quick feedback information until they are finalized, which greatly reduces the market risk. 2.0. Necessary materials and tools for the production of hand boards 2.1 Materials ABS board and gypsum ABS board are the main materials for the production of hand boards, which are characterized by high strength, good toughness, easy processing, small deformation, low melting point, etc. The prototype made of this material is very close to the characteristics of the injection molded product, so it can be used to check whether the structure and strength of the product design are reasonable. In addition, there are organic glass, bakelite, wood substitute, glass fiber and other materials. These materials are generally used in some special occasions, such as car model windows need to be made of organic glass.