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The Beauty of Rapid Prototyping for Test-Driven Design
In any engineering development project, be it either software or hardware driven, testing must always play a major role in successfully meeting the requirements set out by the customer. Sometimes, design choices are not obvious and the best path forward is to identify a quick way to test out the options. In projects that are creating a physical product, this frequently means building expensive custom hardware, which can rapidly eat up a development budget. How are we to move forward in this situation?
The development of ever-more sophisticated 3d printing technology really changes our approach to this problem, as we are now able to get our hands on inexpensive parts, typically printed in plastic (though metals are possible), that can be tested and evaluated for function, if not durability. Even in these parts, areas of concern, such as unanticipated stress concentrations can be identified and corrected for. In some cases, the first prototype parts may reveal information that causes the engineer to re-think the design or solution to the problem at hand. The design of each part can be also be updated through multiple iterations in short periods of time.
This outcome, though it can be somewhat time-consuming, is potentially far cheaper than moving too rapidly through a design effort without using prototyping and testing to prove various critical design elements. Failure to recognize a fatal flaw to in a central design element early on in development has doomed many engineering projects (look at the Hindenburg!). This is especially the case with engineering challenges that are either novel, or are simply difficult to analyze with some type of modeling approach (FEA, CFD, classical mechanics). Also, if your design is heavily model-driven, there is no substitute for some quick real-world data to throw at the model. If your prototype doesn't function like you expect, either your model is wrong, or you haven't built what you expected - either way, quickly discovering these problems is highly desirable.
Another highly desirable property that rapid prototyping and subsystem testing have is that they allow an engineering approach that is very responsive to the customer, even to the point where a client and BES staff engineer will work as a pair, and the client is able to directly participate in the development process. A product under development that can be evaluated and receive continuous input from the customer at all stages of development has a much greater chance of a successful outcome. Less tangible factors, such as appearance of a product and details of the user interface can be worked into a development effort from the start. This results in lowering the costs of taking a design from prototype to manufacturing because the prototype is more polished and closer to the customer's final vision.
