Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Even so, I'm kinda surprised at the lead-time for a prototype. Mind you,
> I guess if you just want to build a model of something, that's quite
> easy. If you want to build it out of the real materials for strength
> test purposes, that's a tad slower...

Even more so if you not only want to get the real material, but also the real
manufacturing process. It may make a hell of a difference, for instance,
whether you drill a hole or instead punch it. Planes have crashed due to such
details.

I guess machined parts are easy to prototype: Just feed the CAD data into a CAM
machine and wait a few moments, that's it (basically).

However, often you don't want your final product to be machined, because that's
prohibitively expensive for a lot of purposes. Pressed (is that the right
word?) or cast parts or the like are much different: They need special tools
that need to be made first (e.g., the molds in case of cast parts). Again,
they're prototypes.

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