FINAL IDEA

CONVERTING YOUR FINAL DESIGN TO A PROTOTYPE(S)

You have now completed your final design and decided on how your product could be manufactured commercially in industry. The next step is to create a working prototype to prove the design concept. This will not be exactly the same as your final design concept for a number of reasons:

- the materials you would like to use are not available at school

- the manufacturing processes you would like to use are not available at school or too complex to recreate at school

- there may be complex forms in your idea that are difficult for you to make in a workshop environment

- the accuracy/ tolerances you require may be hard to achieve when working by hand / using more basic CAD/CAM equipment

- mechanical aspects can be hard to recreate at the small size that may be required

- electronics are often miniaturised and built into circuit boards in industry which is not something you are able to do at school.

Given all of the above you must adapt/convert your final design to a design that can be prototyped in the workshop. To do this you will need to consider:

- using bought in components / electronics / mechanisms from other similar products

- what manufacturing processes you can use at school

- what materials you have available to you at school (or ones that you can buy in)

- how you may need to create multiple prototypes to prove your concept which could be any of the below, combinations or multiples

+ Aesthetic + Mechanical + Electrical + App + Functional

How to start?

Take the table / list / diagram you created in your Final Design 'Technical Specification' which lists all of your parts and commercial manufacturing processes. COPY THIS SLIDE & CHANGE THE TITLE TO PROTOTYPING MATERIALS AND MANUFACTURING PROCESSES.

This slide should go in the 'Final Prototype' section of your slides. You can then work your way through each part and consider how you could make it in the workshop and what material would be best suited. Use the flowchart in the next section to help you with this.

Physical prototypes

If you are creating one or multiple physical prototypes use the following two charts to help you decide what process and material might be most suitable for all the different parts of your prototype.

You are best opening the PDF's up in a new tab (click by the pink circle). When you do this you will see that the different processes link to either a video explaining the process or a useful website that has more information on the process to help you make a judgement on the most suitable process. Please use this video to help you understand how to use the PDF's effectively.

If is also important that you show a variety of skills, both CAD/CAM and more traditional workshop processes so please ensure you use a combination of these processes if you would like to access the higher grades.

Note: taking note of commonly available forms is likely to also influence your FINAL PROTOTYPE - For example - you may discover that a material you wish to use is only available in particular thicknesses, or that a component only comes in certain sizes, in which case you might need to adjust your plan accordingly.

It is also worth noting that just because your real design will use a certain category of material it does not mean that your prototype has to use the same. It is a representation of your idea and so does not have to be exactly the same.