Case Study: Royal College of Art achieves rapid, affordable prototyping for iterative student design with 3D Systems

Royal College of Art transforms student design process with rapid, affordable 3D printing

The Royal College of Art’s Rapidform facility — the world’s largest academic digital manufacturing lab — struggled with a common student design problem: high cost and slow turnaround for stereolithography (SLA) and fused deposition modeling (FDM) meant students delayed prototypes until finals, leaving little time for instructor feedback or iterative refinement. At about 85 pence ($1.77) per cubic centimeter, early prototyping was prohibitively expensive, undermining the iterative design process central to RCA’s postgraduate programs.

Rapidform addressed this by investing in 3D Systems ZPrinters (starting with the ZPrinter 310 and later adding the Spectrum Z510 and ZPrinter 450), bringing fast, full-color, low-cost prints to campus. The printers cut part costs to less than one-third of SLA, print 5–10× faster, doubled the number of ZPrinted models versus SLA/FDM output, enabled multiple student iterations and higher-quality designs, and attracted external London clients and partner institutions to the technology.

Royal College of Art

Martin Watmough

Manager Rapidform