Rapid prototyping services: Can you make them pay?

During the past three years or so, the rapid prototyping industry has experienced explosive growth. RP was projected to be the engineering method of the future, the way OEMs would design in the next millennium. Especially in the beginning, it was almost exclusively the territory of larger companies or service bureaus who could afford the expensive laser sintering and stereolithography machines, which can begin at $150,000 to $200,000 and go up from there. Some smaller companies joined in and added RP capacity right away, thinking the machines would pay for themselves; many of them are now finding themselves selling off or even giving away the machinery because it is just not generating profit.

But not everyone is jumping off the bandwagon yet. Market fluctuations aside, small companies can use RP technology to their advantage. Irwin Enterprises Inc. is a small molder and moldmaker in Lafayette, CO. It's a family affair; President Dennis Irwin's wife, daughter, and daughter-in-law are involved in the daily function of the business, and son Devon serves as vice president and general manager. But don't think this is nothing more than a mom-and-pop organization. The company began by building tools only, but has expanded into a 15,000-sq-ft, full-service operation doing design, moldbuilding, molding, assembly, packaging, and shipping with 25 employees. They run eight presses from 30 to 220 tons, Van Dorns and TMCs. Irwin says his goal has always been to become a complete turnkey operation, and the only way to do so was to join the RP party.

A Part in Hand

Conventional wisdom says it is always better to have something three-dimensional to hand to your designers and tool builders. You might ask how a small operation could swing the requisite investment in machinery and training. The Irwins wondered the same thing. The answer came from Stratasys Inc. (Eden Prairie, MN) in the form of its Genisys 3-D printer. This compact and affordable (less than $60,000) desktop machine makes creating a 3-D model as easy as printing a 2-D document. Irwin says with a few minutes of instruction, any employee in his company can operate it.

The Genisys works in a similar fashion to the laser sintering devices in that it builds a model in layers, but it does so by extruding a durable polyester. Updated software, new in mid-1998, called AutoGen 3.0, makes the process even faster, and one new feature, PartLite, automatically incorporates a sound structural grid inside an otherwise hollow part, which increases structural strength while using less material. Additionally, a part can be sanded and painted depending on the customer's requirements.

Too Good to be True?

Skeptical? Irwin was too. "I really didn't believe it. I thought there was no way it could be that fast, that easy, and that economical. It has definitely proven me wrong." Irwin showed a pair of parts that would cost approximately $600 to $700 with SLA. With the Genisys machine, they cost $158.

The maximum size part it can make is 8 by 8 by 8 inches, but Irwin says you can easily divide a larger part into fractions and glue them together, so there is really no limit to part size. The software will also pack more than one part into the space available, so several smaller parts can be made at once.

Still you may be asking yourself what a small molder can do with such a sophisticated toy. After all, prototyping can be outsourced, and the machine is an, albeit smaller, investment. Irwin truly sees advantages in the design process. "It's so easy now to say, 'Let's try something different.' And in an hour or so you can have the new iteration in your hand to compare with the first."

He is also continually surprised at the way having parts in hand can spark his designers' creativity. Irwin Enterprises was recently involved in a project that required molding four different parts for a single customer. With the four prototypes lined up on the table in front of them, designers realized they could be molded much more easily in one four-cavity mold than in the four separate molds originally planned.

Working for the Little Guy

Irwin likes to say his company serves the little guy with the good idea. It is common knowledge that marketing drives business these days, so a person can have a great idea, but if investors can't visualize it, the idea dies. With this process, even a person with very little capital can turn an idea into a 3-D model.

The bottom line here is that molding and moldmaking is the Irwins' business, and the Genisys is a tool that brings business to them. Recently a group of potential customers came to the Irwins with an idea for an antenna stand that would sit on top of a television set. "They really didn't know exactly what they wanted," says Irwin. "So we talked about it." Together, they put some ideas on paper and created a tentative design on the computer. The clients were still talking in hypotheticals about materials and such when Irwin produced the prototype part that he had sent to print on the Genisys less than an hour earlier.

The group members were so impressed they used Irwin Enterprises for both the tool build and the production run. "To be honest with you, I don't care if we ever make a dime on that machine," says Irwin, "as long as it brings us the tooling and the molding." Based on the Irwins' experiences so far, getting their money's worth should be no problem.