Models of Efficiency

To the list of industries for which Southern California is the undisputed capital, add a new one.

It’s not as flashy as movies or as lucrative as bank robberies, and you’ve probably never heard of it. But the Southland is home to the leading companies in a new and growing field: rapid prototyping.

OK, so there are only a handful of companies in the rapid-prototyping business, but at least two of them are here, designing, making and selling equipment that is radically changing the way manufacturers create their products. Rapid prototyping allows manufacturers to deliver products to consumers that are better designed and cost less, and it helps them do so faster.

Rapid-prototyping systems from companies such as 3D Systems Corp. in Valencia and Helisys Inc. in Torrance can take a three-dimensional computer image and turn it into a model of a consumer product or machine part at a pace that is, well, rapid.

From crafters of toy cars to producers of the full-size versions, from sandal makers to engine designers, the newfound ability to come up with a mock-up in a matter of hours rather than days or weeks has changed the approach to the manufacturing process.

Rapid-prototyping machines have found their way into companies as diverse as General Motors Corp., Mattel Inc. and Cobra Golf. Architect Frank O. Gehry uses rapid prototyping to build miniature versions of his complicated undulating designs.

These systems have helped scientists map earthquake faults and doctors study a patient’s pelvic malformation. They can even do before-and-after models for plastic surgeons.

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Here’s how it works:

Rapid prototyping starts with a three-dimensional computer-generated design--the latest versions of the sort of computer-aided design and manufacturing systems that designers and engineers have used for years. Add a machine that, depending on the process selected, crafts a prototype out of thin layers of plastic, paper or, perhaps eventually, metal.

“To take a computer model and turn it into a physical model without any carving or machining is incredible,” said Terry Wohlers, a Fort Collins, Colo., consultant who tracks the rapid-prototyping industry. “It’s almost like magic when you see that part appear.”

Down the road, rapid-prototyping proponents envision a kind of desktop manufacturing in which anything that can be created in a computer can be transformed into solid reality, at the whim of the computer operator, with the same ease as printing a document. Already, companies are using rapid-prototyping machines to fax 3-D objects.

“It’s a new way of doing things,” said Geoff Smith-Moritz, editor of the San Diego-based Rapid Prototyping Report, a monthly newsletter about the industry. “Most manufacturers are using it to some extent or are starting to experiment with it.”

Cobra Golf is a believer.

To fashion a new club in the olden days, pre-1996, Cobra would employ a toolmaker or artisan who would take the musings of designers and painstakingly cast a few brass prototypes, much in the way fine jewelry is created. It took a lot of time and cost a lot of money. Small design changes were difficult to make.

But for its King Cobra II line of irons, which were introduced last year, the Carlsbad, Calif., company whipped out 90 test versions using a rapid-prototyping machine from Helisys that sells for $92,000.

“The machine has more than paid for itself,” said Chris Best, senior design engineer with Cobra Golf. “It assured us that the design we went to market with not only worked well, but it looked good too.” The resulting product is used by professional golfers Hale Irwin, Jim McGovern and John Schroeder, among others.

The rapid-prototyping industry, which barely existed five years ago, is projected to exceed $1 billion in revenue by 1999, Wohlers said. “On the other hand, I heard . . . that $2.3 billion worth of bagels were sold last year, so I guess $1 billion isn’t all that big,” he joked.

A rapid-prototyping machine is not an investment undertaken lightly: Each one costs between $50,000 and $500,000.

Companies must decide if the ability to make a prototype quickly for marketing or manufacturing purposes is really worthwhile, Smith-Moritz said.

“It’s a step in the design and manufacturing process that people didn’t know they needed, and so maybe they don’t need it,” he said.

But companies have shaved tens of thousands of dollars off the cost of developing products through the use of such machines, and that gives them an edge over lower-tech competitors, he said.

“It shortens the production cycle, and shortening the time to get to market is really key,” Smith-Moritz said. “Even if they don’t save any money in the production, the fact that they get to market a month earlier has a tremendous economic impact.”

Said Wohlers: “We’re seeing companies buying a third or fourth and sometimes even an eighth or 10th machine, so it must be paying off for them.”

The fact that the rapid-prototyping industry is clustered in Southern California has less to do with the business climate than it does with plain old coincidence.

3D Systems was a spinoff of a San Gabriel company that specializes in industrial uses of ultraviolet light. Helisys relocated from the Midwest after the founder’s wife was admitted to UCLA’s medical school. The third of the industry’s largest players, Stratasys, is in Minneapolis, but its founders, S. Scott and Lisa Crump, developed their technology in their Torrance garage in the late 1980s.

Each rapid-prototyping system approaches the process differently and uses unique materials with different strengths and weaknesses.

3D Systems, the largest of the companies, pioneered the industry with a technology that it has dubbed “stereolithography,” in which thin cross-sections of the prototype are “carved” in a liquid resin bath using a laser. When the ultraviolet light hits the plastic, the material solidifies, and the part is built up layer by layer. A separate process can be used to coat the plastic prototype with metal, giving the appearance, if not the durability, of a solid metal part.

The $80-million company, which employs 400 people, sells its machines and operates a service bureau that makes prototypes for clients.

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Helisys, a $12-million company employing 100 people, sells a system that stacks thin sheets of laminated paper and uses a laser to cut a pattern on each new adhesive-covered sheet as it is added. The excess is chipped away by hand, and the resulting part, when sanded and varnished, looks like wood. The company recently introduced plastic sheeting that can be turned into plastic prototypes using Helisys machines, and Chief Executive Michael Feygin said he wants to develop a version of the machine that uses sheets of metal or ceramic composite.

Stratasys, a $23-million company with 150 employees, sells a system that resembles a hot-glue gun extruding layer after layer according to precise computer instructions, building up the part.

Companies use the things they create through rapid prototyping in a number of ways. The models can be shown to potential customers to sell a new product. They can become part of the manufacturing process as a form for a mold or a base for a formed part. Or they can help designers see their work in the real world.

“I’ve had designers say, ‘Oh, that’s what it looks like’--and this guy is the designer,” said Charles W. Hull, co-founder of 3D Systems in 1986 and the acknowledged father of rapid prototyping.

Rapid prototyping provides “several important payoffs for consumers,” said Arthur B. Sims, chairman and chief executive of 3D Systems. “It benefits the consumer because he has a wider array of choices earlier.” In addition, rapid prototyping can reveal design flaws sooner, which could result in a higher-quality product, and it can reduce production costs--savings that manufacturers could pass on to consumers, he said.

A shoe designer working with Wohlers was surprised to see that a sandal sole that looked perfect in a 3-D computer model was actually too thin in spots when rendered into a prototype, Wohlers said. The design flaw was corrected quickly and a better sandal resulted.

Auto manufacturers are heavy users of rapid prototyping, and many own machines from more than one rapid-prototyping equipment maker or patronize a service bureau, which is sort of like a Kinko’s of prototyping.

GM estimates that a 3D Systems machine reduced the cost of producing glove compartment doors for the Pontiac TransAm by 25%.

Porsche created a transparent mock-up of a cooling “water jacket” for a V-6 racing engine that allowed designers to track the movements of tiny air bubbles. This helped them determine areas of stagnation, where heat could build up in the engine.

Mattel designers turned to a 3D Systems machine to whip out prototypes of a new line of Hot Wheels miniature cars just before a key trade show. Mattel figures it saved $14,500 and three to four weeks of development time for each prototype.

Architect Gehry is not known for building boxes, and his designs pose an unusual challenge when it comes time to create an accurate physical model of his visions, said Rick Smith, president of C-Cubed Inc., a Los Angeles company that does computer and physical modeling for Gehry.

“I don’t think any surface has ever been bent the way that Frank does it,” Smith said. Gehry uses the prototypes--built with Helisys machines because the architect favors the resulting wood-like appearance--to evaluate and modify his complicated designs, Smith said. Rapid-prototyping machines have turned out models for such famous Gehry projects as the proposed Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles and the Guggenheim Museum of Modern Art in Bilbao, Spain.

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Rapid-prototyping companies are looking for new customers outside of manufacturing, particularly in the worlds of medicine and science.

Using data from MRI or CAT scans, doctors have used prototypes produced on 3D Systems or Helisys machines to study internal structures such as bones or sinus cavities before surgery. They are able to better plan the surgery and reduce time in the operating room. Rapid prototyping has been used to custom-design prostheses and to design implants.

Scientists at UC San Diego used a Helisys machine to create a model of the bottom of San Diego Bay and of fault geometries in Death Valley for seismic analysis.

As strange and futuristic as this industry is, its leaders have dreams that are even weirder.

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At 3D Systems, Hull dreams of a machine like the “replicater” on the Star Trek Enterprise, where an operator inputs certain specifications and a usable everyday object is created.

Feygin talks of one day replacing the traditional machine shop and its lathes, saws and grinders with a system that would take a computerized design and turn it into a finished part that would require no further processing.

“You have to be a little bit crazy to be in this business,” said Feygin. “You have to believe that fate is on your side.”

Perhaps these visions are not so far away from becoming reality. Consider how Gehry’s computer aces deliver their computer-aided design files to his rapid-prototyping model shop in Massachusetts: They send them over telephone lines. In fact, such 3-D faxing is becoming common practice among users of rapid prototyping.

“That’s exactly what we’re doing--3-D faxing,” Smith said. “We send the file right over the telephone line, they build the model, and overnight it back to us.”

And Stratasys machines may be boldly going where no rapid prototyper has gone before: into space. NASA owns two Stratasys machines, which are being tested for possible use in a space station to build replacement parts.