RAPID PROTOTYPING - APPLICATIONS IN ACADEMIC-INSTITUTIONS AND INDUSTRY

In today's competitive world, the manufacturers have to get a new and improved product to the market as fast as possible to be able to compe te in the global market. The major obstacle for this task had been a l ong product development cycle, i.e., design, prototype manufacture and testing. The introduction of rapid prototyping (RP) in the early stag es of product development has greatly reduced the development time fra me and cost involved in prototype manufacturing. Furthermore; RP appli cations are growing very fast in such a way that it is now possible to produce parts not as prototypes, but as final parts to be used in sev eral engineering applications. Thus, RP is now acting as a bridge to h elp designers, manufacturing engineers, marketing and sales personnel to provide goods timely to the customer. This paper discusses practice s, current developments and future trends of RP. This paper also discu sses the use and role of RP in academic institutions.