In the year since investing in the Printer, Trinity has used the technology to save time and money in both the short and long terms. Rapid prototyping with the Printer has even generated new sales revenue and increased brand equity.
According to Wood, the Printer shrinks Trinity's printing time by 80 percent for a typical part, enabling engineers to complete time-sensitive designs faster and with fewer interruptions.
3D printing has cut Trinity's entire design cycle in half, from eight weeks to four weeks. Moving from concept to manufacturing typically takes eight weeks when the prototype needs to come from a manufacturing partner or longer if a company skips the prototype only to find out it doesn't fit as expected. By creating prototypes in house and ensuring fit and function, Trinity compresses the prototyping part of the cycle from four weeks to less than a day.
In addition, asking a manufacturing partner for a production-level prototype engine would cost at least $800 and involve asking favors. Whatever the cost, the part would take three to four weeks to arrive, suspending Trinity's design process as competitors continue to pump out products.
Trinity has reaped a significant return on the Printer's unsurpassed resolution, a full three times higher than the company's previous printer .0035-inch layer thickness vs. .01 inches. This difference enables Trinity to create prototypes that faithfully resemble production parts. The new capability enabled Trinity to secure thousands of dollars in new revenue this year by using the ColorJet Printer to create mockups of new vehicles for an important tradeshow just before Christmas.
"Unveiling prototypes at the show made all the difference in our sales that year, because the show is huge for our market," said Wood. "It drives our industry and Christmas sales. In addition to the thousand of attendees, many people go online from around the world to see what's hot during the event. We couldn't display the prototypes with our old printing technology because of their poor quality. The technology's shortcomings in resolution left curved surfaces jagged and unsuitable for public display. Showing a prototype from the Printer made an enormous difference."
Because of the finished look of a 3D printed prototype, Trinity for the first time can also use 3D printed models in advertisements, brochures and marketing materials. And because of the low cost and unrivaled speed of the printer, Trinity has been using the system in entirely new ways. It is making part stands to display new products at trade shows and creating giant bolts to decorate its trade show booths in a Monster Garage theme. Real steel bolts are so heavy they would collapse the walls.
Trinity also uses 3D printed prototypes to communicate with suppliers, such as the overseas manufacturing partner that makes Trinity's ready-to-run vehicles. In late 2005, Trinity was developing an entirely new category of 1/18th-scale vehicles and sent a secret mockup to the manufacturer. That gave the partner a chance to understand the product before engineers and executives visited to hammer out details. Giving all parties a jump on the process this way lets Trinity bring better products to market more quickly.
"The combination of our CAD software and our 3D printing system has been the single biggest step we've taken to improve the way we refine concepts, develop products, communicate with our suppliers and market our products," says Wood. "Today, we can prototype a complete car kit before going to production and use it for fit and function testing, and a plethora of profitable marketing activities. It's just been phenomenal."