JR provides customers around the world with exceptional quality, fast turnaround times, and rapid, cost-effective prototyping services. Equipped with the latest prototyping and production manufacturing technologies, advanced industrial-grade equipment, and a team of experienced engineers, JRidea can bring your design to market within days. So let me introduce you to our rapid prototyping methods.
Rapid 3D printing
JR's rapid prototyping services for 3D printing (additive manufacturing) cover different 3D printing technologies:
Ideal for 3D printing plastics and metals, our 3D printing rapid prototyping service offers a wide range of material and finish options. These additive manufacturing techniques can also sometimes be used in production. without sacrificing build quality. Other benefits include geometric freedom and affordability, especially at low volume. 3D printing is often the first choice for concept models, but SLM precision technology is also suitable for professionals.
Rapid CNC Machining
JR has a large inventory of CNC machining centers, milling machines, and lathes (for CNC turning) capable of rapidly prototyping CNC machined plastic or metal parts or other rapid prototyping processes. CNC machining represents one of the most precise rapid prototyping technologies on the market. Quality remains high, although fast machining takes precedence over the extremely tight tolerances in fast CNC machining.
Small batches have fast turnaround times, and CNC prototyping produces parts that are not far off production quality. Costs more than 3D printing, but the surface finish and part strength are often superior.
Rapid molds
Rapid tooling (bridge tooling or prototyping tooling) refers to the rapid CNC machining of metal molds for injection molding. It is therefore the first step toward rapid injection molding. Mold prototyping tools are ideal when customers need 100 to 2,000 injection molded parts; Additionally, production steel tooling may be more popular. The benefits of rapid tooling include fast turnaround times and the ability to prototype and test injection molded parts that might otherwise take months to produce. Rapid tooling is also much cheaper than mass-production tooling.
Although rapid tooling and rapid injection molding are more expensive than 3D printing, they produce plastic parts that are closer to series quality and therefore usable for functional testing.
Rapid Sheet Metal Prototyping
Sheet metal rapid prototyping is a range of rapid prototyping services for manufacturing sheet metal parts, involving various forming, cutting, and assembly processes that treat sheet metal in different ways.
Sheet metal rapid prototyping is commonly used for flat parts such as brackets and enclosures and can be adapted to various sizes, including very large metal parts. Setup times may be longer than comparable methods, but sheet metal is very inexpensive to produce large and relatively simple parts.
One of the benefits of rapid sheet metal prototyping is that the solid sheet metal stock can then be CNC machined for additional functionality.
Rapid Metal Casting
Casting is often thought of as a process for producing high-quality metal parts, but Rapid Metal Casting - using 3D printing to create inexpensive models - offers an affordable way to produce prototypes from cast metal.
JR's Rapid Metal Casting service is available because we have strong relationships with several large foundry companies that typically do not accept low volume (10+) prototyping orders from new customers.
The benefits of Rapid Metal Casting include near-production quality metal parts that can be very large, at surprisingly high speeds the castings have excellent tensile strength and can also be reworked.
We can provide a variety of rapid prototyping services, there is always one that meets your needs.