Blog
Star Rapid’s blog aims to share our hard earned knowledge on manufacturing and product development. We hope these articles help you to optimize your product design and better understand the world of rapid prototyping, rapid tooling, 3D printing and low-volume manufacturing.

Inventor’s Toolkit: 7 Tips For Inventing Products
Every day we talk to inventors, entrepreneurs and product designers who need help making a physical prototype. For these people to be successful inventors, they need to be armed with knowledge to avoid the many pitfalls they may face in the development process. Here are 7 tips to help make

Getting a Beautiful Finish on Painted Parts
The process of painting beautiful parts There are some unique challenges that present themselves when trying to achieve the perfect paint finish for prototypes or low-volume production. High volume batch production can be automated to produce large runs of identical parts, but small batches must be carefully handled on a case-by-case basis.

The Engineer’s Bookshelf: Machinery’s Handbook
Although it’s now digitized on CD-ROM, Machinery’s Handbook still remains The Book to turn to for a vast amount of information relevant not only to machinists but also product designers, tool makers, engineers, inventors and hobbyists who want definitive information about how things are made with machine tools. Let’s take

How 3D Printing Is Being Used In Medicine, Part 2
In Part One we looked at the use of advanced 3d printing techniques for healing and supporting the vulnerable human frame, including bones, joints and teeth. Now we’ll take a look at the even more challenging applications involving soft tissue, skin, organs and robotic interfaces that blur the line between man

How 3D Printing Is Being Used In Medicine, Part 1
Advances in additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, are capturing the attention of healthcare professionals around the world. In fact, 3D printing in medicine currently accounts for nearly 13% of all 3D printing revenue. While the technology has been around for decades and has utilities across numerous industries, modern uses of

A Word About Responsible Sourcing
There are a number of concerns that modern manufacturers have, above and beyond the making of products. Among these is the need to demonstrate due diligence in the sourcing of raw materials, especially if those materials potentially originate from war-torn regions of Central Africa. There are legal statutes like the