Prototyping and engineering

The prototype is the first piece you can hold in your hand, and that is exactly its purpose: to get the person who drew it and the people who have to make it to agree on a real object rather than an image. It is the moment when everything a 3D model cannot show comes out — the weight, the sound, the play between two components, how a finish actually behaves on a curved surface.

It is built with the same operations as the production run, not with shortcuts: cutting, bending, machining, welding and dressing. A prototype made differently from production tells you very little, because it does not test the cycle that will actually be used. On the piece we check the critical dimensions, the strength of the joints, how the visible surfaces behave and whether the chosen finish is feasible.

Engineering it for production is the least visible and most decisive part. It means turning a piece that works into a piece that can be repeated: defining the order of operations, the locating references, the welding fixtures that hold the geometry, the points where inspection has to happen during the cycle rather than at the end. This is also where we decide what is worth making in one piece and what is better split, because a piece made in two parts and joined well often costs less than a single piece that is hard to hold in tolerance.

Almost always the prototype produces changes. That is its purpose: changing now costs one piece, changing after the run has started costs a batch. Revisions go back onto the drawing, so that the approved version is one version, and it is the one that goes into production.

Once approved, the prototype becomes the physical reference for the order: the signed sample the production pieces are compared against, finish included — and on an approved sample a finish stops being a description and becomes an object. From then on any dispute has a physical term of comparison, and arguments about what was agreed stop being a matter of opinion.