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Modelling the future
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14/07/2008
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A small company with big clients enthusiastically supports the Innovation & Design Excellence Awards (iDEAs) and the boost they give to the UK’s leading edge industries
A small rapid prototyping and modelling company is putting its weight behind the Innovation & Design Excellence Awards (iDEAs) scheme, because of the way they believe it can help raise the profile of companies at the leading edge – including some of its own customers.
Justin Pringle, managing director of Prototype Projects, based in Royston, said of the scheme: “I think it’s a great idea. It’s an opportunity for people to be proud of what they are doing and for teams to feel good. The UK is a world class centre for research and development technologies and people need to be constantly reminded of this.”
Royston is in Hertfordshire, rather than neighbouring Cambridgeshire, but it is very much part of the grouping of high technology companies that have grown up in and around Cambridge and lead the world in innovation – particularly in the fields of medical, pharmaceutical and high technology based products, both for science and technology and for consumers.
Prototype Projects is a 13-strong business that started in 1980 with two people, and was then bought out by the present owners who invested heavily in it, purchasing latest technologies and equipment. It specialises in model making, rapid prototyping, jigs and fixtures and short run production. Technologies available include stereolithography (SLA). Pringle was proud to point out that SLA rapid prototypes can be “next day delivery” and they have two “Viper” machines capable of producing models with “Normal” 0.25 +/-0.025mm layer thickness or “High” resolution 0.075mm +/- 0.015mm layer thickness. Available materials are; “Accura SI50, an ABS replica; SI60, a clear ABS replica; and “BlueStone”, a ceramic filled material for high temperature applications. The company can also produce models by FDM, SLS onto vacuum castings or RIM mouldings, with a normal delivery time of as short as three to five working days (because of the need to make moulds); CNC machining and rapid tooling for plastic injection moulding.
The company is certified to ISO 9001 – 2000 and places an emphasis on quality.
“Our customer base uses us because we pay attention to detail,” said Pringle.
When we asked about their ability to give good visual impressions, he said: “We can make our models look exactly like the final product or better!”
All projects are confidential to clients, but it is no secret that the customer list includes: Philips, Bosch, Mercedes-Benz, GlaxoSmithKline and Cambridge Consultants. Speaking of his customers, Pringle said: “There are some world class design consultancies out there, particularly in this area, and we are very proud to work for them.”
Typical prototyped parts include those for the automotive industries, including lights, interior fittings and seating; consumer, medical and pharmaceutical products, and scale models. He said: “We try to treat our customers as unique. Every customer is unique and every project is unique. When we start a project, what we do is not blinkered by our previous work so we look at it afresh.”
He added: “Our team is used to working to deadlines. We are aware that our customers have deadlines imposed on them, and this means we have to work within them. Our team is happy to put in the extra hours to get a job done in the time required.”
When we asked him how he saw the future for his business and the UK economy generally, he was bullish. Despite what he described as the “gloom and doom” in the national and international media, he said his company’s business is booming.
“We have seen some very impressive growth in the last 18 months. The growth businesses in the UK are research and development technologies, and pharmaceutical, but you can pick any leading edge industry,” he said. “Our last year was our best ever. We in Britain have got to stop talking about recession and get down to doing good quality work and show the world we really can do it.”
Why rapid prototypes are vital
Rapid prototyping is an essential part of the product development process, because it is well known that the vast majority of customers purchase products, not based on complicated specifications, but on how they relate to them based on what are often deeply psychological factors. There is no way these can be tested except by placing 3D product mockups in people’s hands and seeing how they relate to them and what they do with them. This means making models that not only look like the final product but, as far as possible, work like the final product.
Ways of using products or breaking them may be obvious to the designers, but are often not at all obvious to the end users. Redesigns in the light of customer dissatisfaction are not only expensive but usually catastrophic, losing markets forever to competitors.
The mechanism that jams in service in the hands of users – or the complex series of button presses that nobody can remember – are fatal to a product and often to the business that makes it. It is essential that these things are designed out at an early stage.
On the other hand, a simple feature, such as incorporating a reflecting mirror element in mobile phones sold to women – who can pretend to be texting or surfing while checking their make up – them can make it the killer product of choice.
These things have to be discovered and tested, and if necessary improved, at the earliest possible stage, mindful of the fact that product lifecycles are getting shorter and shorter, and competition is truly global, thanks to the Internet – where news of successes and failures circle the globe very quickly.
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Prototype Projects
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