Prototype Projects: Printing the way to 3D success

Article (written by Mike Scialom) reproduced courtesy of Cambridge Business magazine:

Go-to firm for rapid prototype turnarounds in Silicon Fen

It’s easy to forget – and worth remembering – that economic success stories such as Cambridge don’t just form overnight.

The growth the city is currently enjoying has been nurtured over years and decades, and depends not just on a pipeline of amazing ideas, but also on a vast array of firms who can help deliver a finalised product.

One of these ancillary services is delivered by Royston-based Prototype Projects. The firm builds early samples for iconic Cambridge businesses, including Cambridge Consultants and PA Consulting.

“We specialise in printing smaller items with an emphasis on a fast turnaround, typically for next-day delivery,” explains managing director Justin Pringle. “If they’re ordered by 5pm, it’s delivered the next day.”

Which is pretty awesome, and means that if you’ve designed a new drug delivery device or toothbrush – or a the casing for a new glue gun, or a car part – the prototype can be on your desk in time for the next day’s mid-morning meeting.

“3D printing has been around for 30 years,” Justin says, “but it wasn’t called 3D printing, it was called rapid prototyping.”

Prototype Projects began in 1980, and was “taken over by my father and myself in 2000,” he says.

“In 2000 we looked at our customer base and it had a heavily automotive bias and we thought there was an opportunity to work with the technology companies in and around the Cambridge area.”

Today, the automotive sector is just 2 per cent of the business, and the rest is “technical, medical and consumer products, UK-wide and for some clients in Europe”. Last year the firm’s site was expanded to create a dedicated 3D printing suite for its customers.

“With rapid prototyping,” continues Justin, “there are four main processes, all of which we can do under one roof here.”

The processes are:

• SLA, stereolithography: Has been around for 30 years and is still the most common form of 3D printing. “It’s good quality, and engineers know what they’re going to get,” says Justin of the hard-plastic resulting product.
• SLS – selected laser sintering: Generates more complex 3D shapes that could be functional or artistic. “The client sends us a CAD file, we process it, and send it to the machine, it slices it into layers and the slices are then melted into each other.” We watch a very fine white powder being sintered by a CO2 laser. “It’s building an impeller for a client.” Justin can’t say more than that – “99.9 per cent of the details are confidential, it’s all NDA’d”.
• An FDM machine: Fusion Deposition Modelling is an additive manufacturing technology. The printers use a thermoplastic filament which is heated to its melting point and then extruded upwards from the bottom, layer by layer, to create a three-dimensional object. “The results of this process are stronger than the other processes but don’t have such fine feature definition. But you can drop these products and they won’t break, where a product built by SLA would break,” concludes Justin.

Much of the site, especially the 3D printing suite, resembles a laboratory.

“Parts come off the SLS process with quite rough finish and that gets smoothed out in the vibration chamber,” Justin says as we watch a plastic object immersed in what looks like gravel go round and round in a sort of mixing bowl.

Prototype Projects employs 17 people – four in management, the rest in production. “The 3D printing operation employs a team of rapid prototype technicians, some with 20-plus years’ experience.” In production terms “75 per cent of our business is 3D printing and associated aspects, and 25 per cent is CNC, computer numerical control, which is an older technology, suitable for a customer who wants something with say, a metal case and plastic parts.”

The CNC section is in another, older, part of the building, and is in sharp contrast to the high-tech feel: with its vast lathes it’s more reminiscent of a foundry.

There’s no doubt things are looking good. “We’re working with blue chip companies both regional and from the wider UK,” Justin says. “The medical sector is becoming increasingly important for us, along with kitchenware, coffee machines, and hair styling products.”

But let’s not bang on about Christmas: if you want something in 3D for your next product meeting, rather than just a drawing or a CAD file, please contact us.