Rapid prototyping of hardware components

Rapid prototyping is an “enabling” technology, bringing true simultaneous engineering and time compression to many organisations. These technologies are generally considered to be the process by which a facsimile model or (in certain circumstances) a master pattern is manufactured by layering techniques, directly from CAD data. However, unless rapid prototyping technologies are considered in context, and as a part of a much larger discipline, then typically many organisations will. gain very little commercial advantage by simply producing quick “hi-tech” models