Rapid prototyping in the automotive industry

Learn how to speed designs to market with advanced 3D printing

Short design-cycle iteration is important in any industry, but none more so than the automotive arena. So what does this mean for the auto industry? It highlights the need for shortened design cycles and more seamless product design in order to shorten time-to-market. Low margins, due to the rising cost of development, make automotive a capital-intensive industry with the added challenges of constant innovation, customization and the need to bring designs to life efficiently and cost-effectively in order to stay ahead of the curve.

The importance of new design validation cannot be underestimated. The auto industry prototyping market is estimated to hit $5 billion by 2020, driving industry designers and engineers toward new ways to get their designs validated, quickly.

But the constraints inherent in many of the intricate and multi-material and fused parts, especially for interior and exterior parts that call for custom features and complex multi-material parts with separate elements, mean the demand for prototypes often exceeds the capabilities of traditional, multi-step processes. An exploration of how 3D printing for automotive can enable both rapid iteration and facilitate complex design, factors that lead to cost reduction and increased speed, are worth exploring.