Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
Content archived on 2024-06-10

Rapid prototyping and tooling industrial applications

Objective



In order to comply with the change and new demands of the market manufacturing companies have to be more competitive. This implies the need for a shorter time to market for new products, together with an increase of functionality and shape complexity of the products. Since these requirements cannot be met by one SME on its own this Will result in emerging strategic alliances in which more companies cooperate. The lifecycle of products becomes smaller, caused by smaller batch order sizes combined with a greater variety of the products. All contributors in the value chain starting from the product-idea and ending with product manufacturing are compelled to carry out the required development work in a shorter period of time.

For integrated parts, the process development cycle becomes a more and more knowledge consuming activity. In fact some products will not be developed completely once they appear on the market. However customers are not willing to pay more e.g. wait longer for extensive testing. In order to compensate for the resulting lack of important information exchange between areas and proper design checks and testing, a stricter planning of procedures and application of simultaneous engineering is necessary. Just in time delivery is the ruling issue here. By doing so, the iterative sequence of product development itself is accelerated so that more time is available for product evaluation. Research and development done in the 80's speeded up the last phase of the chain being the manufacturing of the products. Starting in the late 80's begin 90's the design phase of the products was extensively studied. Simultaneous engineering, concurrent engineering, design for assembly (DFA) played their role in speeding up the design-phase. One of the greatest achievements was the introduction of 3D CAD and its possibility of the connection to so called "rapid prototyping and tooling" technologies. These technologies enable designers to make a real product (a 3D plot instead of a 2D-drawing) directly from their design in a short time without human interference. Examples of those technologies are Stereolithography (SLA), Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) and Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) (see reference list Chapter 8).

The next step is to transfer this knowledge to and implement techniques at SME's. It is known (reference EARP, Chapter 8) that the use of prototyping during the process development cycle influences the sequence of the development cycles. In the following Figure 1, the conventional sequence of the design of an injection mould is illustrated. Tests of the mould can be done only after it has been almost finished. Final assembly and tests are influenced in the line by a sequential process. A prototype helps to test the tool at an early stage and reduces both the development time and uncertainty of the development process.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

Data not available

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

Data not available

Coordinator

NEDERLANDSE ORGANISATIE VOOR TOEGEPAST NATUURWETENSCHAPPELIJK ONDERZOEK TNO*
EU contribution
No data
Address
6,Bevesierweg, Harssens (MML)
1780 AM DEN HELDER
Netherlands

See on map

Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data

Participants (25)

My booklet 0 0