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Stage 4 of 6 — 2–6 weeks per round
Hold it before you order five thousand
A prototype is the last cheap opportunity to be wrong. Before tooling is cut and a production run is committed, the product is made as a physical sample so you can handle it, test it, show it to the people who will buy it, and change what needs changing while changing it still costs very little.
Appearance and function are usually separate exercises. An appearance prototype tells you whether it looks and feels right. A functional prototype tells you whether it works, survives, and does not fail in the way the design review suspected it might. Which you need depends on the product, and often you need both in sequence.
Expect more than one round. The first sample almost always produces a list — a wall thickness that flexes, a fit that is tighter than the drawing allowed, a finish that photographs differently to how it looks. Every one of those found here is an adjustment. The same one found after production is a container of stock you cannot sell.
The round that you approve becomes the golden sample: sealed, photographed, documented and held as the reference the production run is measured against. From that point "this is not what I ordered" stops being a matter of opinion, because there is a physical object that settles it.
Functional prototype
Does it work, and does it survive.
Appearance prototype
Does it look and feel like the product you described.
Material evaluation
Performance testing
Design improvements and engineering revisions
Carried back into the drawings, not left in an email.
User feedback round
Put it in front of the people who would buy it, before you make five thousand.
Golden sample approval
Sealed, photographed and held as the standard the production run is measured against.
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