At its inception in the late 80s, the rapid prototyping process was largely inaccurate and the choice of materials and technologies was limited. Back then, a prototype served as a basis for discussion but could not be used for anything "serious", i.e. in a real production environment. Since then, accuracy has improved significantly and so has the range of applications.
For Materialise, the starting point was the RP technology stereolithography. From there we expanded our machine park with a whole range of techniques for the production of prototypes, which can be used for diverse applications:

• Concept models
• Functional prototypes
• Visual prototypes
• Giant prototypes
• Small Series