Tag Archive for: Prototyping

People are great at coming up with completely new ideas, though far too few are able to act on their ingenuity. It’s not too hard to think of new products or inventions, but turning something like this into a reality can be much harder, and most won’t have any idea where to start. To help you out with this, this post will be going through the whole process from paper to product. Exploring each of the stages you will need to take on before you can bring a product to market, this should give you a much better idea of the path you should be taking, while also giving you the chance to get started on your dream product.

Research

The first stage in this process is going to involve some research. This will serve more than one purpose; giving you the opportunity to make sure that the idea doesn’t already exist while also ensuring that the idea will be possible in the first place. You can do all of this research online, and there are plenty of forums and communities around the web which can be used to help you to test your concept. If a lot of people think you’re onto a winner, this will be a good sign, though you should avoid giving away your idea if you think it will be a success.

Inspiration & Design

Next up, it will be time to start thinking about designing your product. This process should always start on paper, even if you aren’t very good at drawing, as this will give you an easy way to get your ideas into the real world.

The sketches you make don’t need to be perfect, but will serve to make it much easier to come up with the form and style of your product. Most designers will look for inspiration at this stage, using sites like Pinterest to look at other products to fuel their creativity.

Once you have a good idea of how you’d like your product to look and work, you can begin to create a 3D model of it. Tools like Solidworks are perfect for this, though they can be tricky to use and you may need to watch some YouTube videos before you’re able to make beautiful models with it. This sort of model will enable you to make the product very easily, as you will already have a CAD design for it, but it will also give you the chance to get an idea of what it will look like when it is made.

Most modern products involve some sort of electronics, and this is something you may have to design at the same time as the physical form of your product. Designing a PCB isn’t easy, and you may need to use a microcontroller, like an Arduino, to get started with this. Once you’ve managed to make a circuit and script which works, you can start to think about designing a dedicated PCB for it, though you may need to hire someone to help you with this.

Prototyping

With a 3D design made, the next stage in this process will involve some prototyping. This stage is crucial, as it will ensure that you are creating something which people will want to use, while also giving you a chance to test your concept before you spend loads of money on getting it made. Of course, though, you have to use the right tools for something like this, or you will end up wasting a lot of resources.

Companies like rapidpsi.com can offer rapid manufacturing services which will make it much easier to prototype your ideas. Using 3D printers, rather than regular CNC machines, companies like this are able to make products extremely quickly without having to invest money in special tools for the job. This gives you the chance to make a range of different prototypes without having to wait for months each time you make an improvement to your designs.

Testing will also be a big part of this stage. You can handle this largely by yourself, though it can be worth getting other people to put your products through hell to make sure that they work properly. Prototypes are usually more fragile than a finished product, but you will still have the opportunity to make sure that they function well, while also establishing the weak points of each product to make sure that they don’t break when they are used by customers.

The Manufacturing

After you’ve done some testing and are happy with the prototype you’ve made, it will finally be time to get one with manufacturing your product. This can be an expensive process, and there are quite a few different ways to handle it. Some people will want to make their product themselves, and will buy the machinery and tools they need to do it from home. For larger operations, looking to countries like China can be a good idea, as there are a lot of businesses in this part of the world which specialize in manufacturing for other companies.

In some cases, you may be able to get another company to buy your product from you. This can be trickier, and you won’t get the chance to work on your product anymore, but it can also make the whole thing far more cost-effective. Most people will be happy to see their product on the market, and it won’t matter how it got there as long as you’ve been paid fairly for it. Of course, though, this will be a last resort for a lot of people.

With all of this in mind, you should be feeling ready to take on the challenge of bringing your product ideas into the real world. This process can be a difficult one, but the results will almost always be worth it. Even if your product isn’t successful, not many people can say that they’ve achieved something like this, and this makes it well worth all the work.