Impact of time compression techniques on spotlight production

Rapid tooling (RT) and rapid prototyping (RP) techniques are used in product design and development. They enable designers to obtain a model or a small series to be evaluated and tested. The Lighting Technique Industry needs to produce aesthetic and functional prototypes to evaluate in situ the effectiveness of a new product. Usually the metal part is produced by sheet turning, a technique allowing us to obtain only the working metal part (parabola). Evidently this obstructs the possibility to evaluate the assembled product. The functional product can be obtained only during the definitive production. An integrated approach was tested by a Lighting Technique Industry to obtain the aesthetic and functional prototypes, using a known product as a benchmark. Several RP techniques were used for the production of the aesthetic model. After the acceptance of the style and definitive shape (aesthetic model produced by Fused Deposition Modelling and 3D Printing techniques), the functional model was produced by Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) and Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM). An original solution for replacing the metal part with polymers coated by aluminium vacuum deposition was performed, the part was also produced by a rapid tooling technique. The combination of prototype drawing dies and laser cutting instead of trimming can answer many questions regarding the development of metal sheet components. The preliminary tests regarding the effectiveness of the functional model provided positive results. Later a simulation software was used to optimise the process parameters and injection moulding die.