Benefits in Product Development by an RP Industrial User Group and Future Chances with RP Technologies

Several companies established a Rapid Prototyping User Group organized and leaded by the Fraunhofer Institut für Produktionstechnik und Automatisierung IPA in order to improve the special product development by coordinated examinations and tests of process chains and the exchange of the results and experiences. The costs for the necessary research, tests and consultation are shared and in consequence every partner has access to application relevant information by minimized costs. The User Group is organized in form of a two year project with increasing number of partners in a first phase. First partners in the group were Andreas Stihl, Bombardier-Rotax GmbH, Volkswagen AG, Rücker GmbH and Behr GmbH. At the beginning the experience and knowledge of the partners in RP were on different levels. But after some weeks of common work the current problems and requirements became the same. The effort to get information and to apply it in the actual product development decreased by this User Gro up. This presentation will describe some activities and will present the state of the art, present limits and problems in the industrial use of RP. Future trends in RP will be discussed based on this and the knowledge about current research and developments.