In this solo podcast, Ian Peterman, CEO of Peterman Design Firm, walks listeners through the wide spectrum of prototyping options available to inventors and product developers. He begins with low‑fidelity, DIY approaches—paper, cardboard, and recycled household items—illustrating how simple mock‑ups can convey ideas and enable early feedback. He then explains how to assess the purpose, required functionality, fidelity, cost, and timeline of a prototype to choose the appropriate method. The discussion moves to digital prototyping, covering 3D modeling software (Blender, Fusion 360, SolidWorks) and 3D‑printing services (Shapeways, local printers), highlighting material choices from plastics to metal. Peterman outlines when to engage external resources such as machine shops, prototype shops, or full‑service design firms, and stresses the importance of a structured design process to avoid non‑functional prototypes. Throughout, he offers practical anecdotes, material suggestions (foam, clay, 3D pens, laser cutters), and encouragement to experiment without fearing perfection. The episode ends with a call to subscribe and a brief promotion of his firm’s website and social channels.
Chapters
Hello, my name is Ian Peterman, CEO and founder of Peterman Design Firm, and today we're going to talk about prototyping. How can you prototype your invention, your idea? And a lot of people have come to me over the years asking, how do I, how do I get my idea prototyped? How do I get it to a point where I can show people and explain what it is and what— how it works? And there's a ton of different methods that you can use. I even, as a kid, one of my, one of my dad's friends built race cars, and he would build his own custom body paneling. He would strip down an existing chassis, put in his own engine, put in everything else, and he would build his own body panels. And the way he did that was with cardboard. He started with cardboard. The final product was carbon fiber formed pieces, but he started with cardboard. That was his design. His design started there. And, you know, in— if you look at automotive world clay models, you know, there's tons of examples of amazingly high detail clay models for sculpting out entire car bodies, which is a lot of clay to put together. But the reality is a prototype, there's so many ways. And we just talked about in one of our other videos injection molding and how you can prototype for injection molded parts. And that's, you know, a little bit more specific on the technical end. And, you know, when you're A lot of people that come to me with that question of how do I prototype, it's because they're needing to pitch it to someone else. They need to show someone else their idea. So when you have an idea and you start talking to people and they say, that's great, well, why don't you show me? You need to have some sort of prototype. And so, you know, it doesn't have to be complicated. It can be overwhelming if you think about, oh, prototyping, I have to make it this and I have to make it out of all these materials and everything needs to be exact and precise and that That isn't really the case, so it kind of depends on where you're at. But if you're at that early stage where you just need to show your idea and give it some physical 3D life that you can show somebody, you can use depending on the product. And obviously, this is different different for every situation. But you know, a cardboard model might work. As a kid, I built. All kinds of machines. And I built like space shuttle, I recreated Apollo rockets out of paper and Scotch tape. So the idea that you can't mock up something without is kind of a silly notion. You can do that. Get some paper, get some scissors, get some tape, and you'll be able to build a lot of things and show things visually. And so If it needs to be, if you need to take it to the next level, and those are what we call in the design world concept models. They don't have to function necessarily, or they do function in a limited capacity, right? You know, my paper rocket didn't actually take off, but, and, you know, the hatches didn't lock, but I could open them. I could open the hatches and be able to do that. And so you can show how something is going to work. Even with a paper model, and you can even use paper to demo an app. So you can do it. I mean, it's almost like a flipbook. Oh, you click here. Here's you show this. Here you show this. So you don't even need a computer in order to make a prototype of your idea. That's that is how basic you can bring it down to, and. Don't be worried about it. Like, people prototype all kinds of things all the time. And if you prototype that way and you show somebody, you're going to be able to talk about it and talk through things. It's also going to allow you, as a person who's creating the idea or has the invention, to see it in 3D, see it in real, real time. If it's something that's a lot more complicated and a paper model isn't gonna do, and cardboard version isn't gonna do, then there's a ton of different ways to prototype. I've seen prototypes that were basically cobbled together, pieces of recycling. People use empty canisters, soda cans, all kinds of things, anything they have around the house even to cobble together a prototype. And sometimes it's all they need. They put that together and, oh, it works. It does this and this. And yeah, it'll be custom manufactured. You will use maybe some different materials, but it gives a really solid idea. And so when you're prototyping, you need to think about how much do you need a prototype, because that will determine, you know, how much does a prototype need to do. That'll determine which methods you use. We can go all the way to You know, 3D printing. 3D printing, if you're really scrappy, go learn some 3D modeling, 3D printing, use a 3D printing service. You can get it made in all kinds of different plastics and it works really well. You can, you know, it'll take you however long to learn the CAD program, which there's some great ones out there. There's even really good free ones depending on how you like to model. And if you're okay with more complicated user interface, something like Blender is really good for 3D modeling more organic shapes. If you want something that's a little more on the technical CAD side, something like Fusion 360 or even a student version of SolidWorks, something like that will be relatively cheap or free to get your hands on and will allow you to 3D model and, and 3D print your prototype. So, and it's really easy, it's really cheap. It takes a couple weeks to get a 3D print done and to you. It just doesn't take that much anymore to prototype. And you can, you can go crazy with materials. I've seen clients come from— you use Shapeways before, for example, and you can get metal, you can get finishes, all kinds of stuff that When I was a kid, it was not around. It wasn't an option. You could not go around and 3D print pretty much anything you wanted and have it delivered to your door in a couple weeks. That's, that's an option that is just available in the last few years, and it's fantastic. It's wonderful. So that's a great way to prototype. And if you need to go a step farther, a lot of clients I've worked with, they've just— when they have done a prototype before, they've just gone to their local machine shop or You know, somebody like that that already is making stuff. And there's prototype shops. So when you— if you're looking for somebody, look for a prototype shop. Look for a small machine shop who'd be willing to work with you or, you know, listen to you. Big machine shops are often busy with huge jobs. They probably don't have time to run a little prototype and work with you. And then the other is, you know, if you have Have the cash and you can do it, work with a design firm. You can work with a little, you know, find a freelancer, or you can all the way up to working with a firm like mine where we can do everything for you. We can help with the design, we can help with prototyping. And so when you're trying to prototype your concept, you have a lot of options. And the question you need to ask yourself is, what do I need this prototype for? What does it need to do? And when do you need to have it? And that will give you some guidance, you know, eliminate some things. If you need it really quickly, well, paper— you probably have some paper lying around in your, in your house. You can do that pretty quickly. And having gone through design school, I've seen some really good drawings and prototypes made with just some paper, glue, and you know, other crafty supplies, because a lot of, a lot of students, they're on a student budget, so they're not going to spend the most money possible on a prototype either, but they have to do so well that they can, you know, impress their teachers. So there's a lot you can do there, and then if you are wanting to do more, you can work with an agency, work with a company, work with a designer. And/or work with a company and get it done. And so all these options— 3D printing, paper modeling, cardboard modeling— there's even other material that is used that there's, you know, bendable, formable plastics. There's— you can get 3D pens that allow you to draw in 3D in shapes. That are basically 3D printing on a pen. There's— you can use all kinds of other things out there. You can buy laser cutters, you can buy your own 3D printer, even if you're really getting into it, buy your own 3D printer, learn some 3D modeling, and do that. If you're wanting to really launch a company, if you're at that level of, I need something, it doesn't need to be super fast, but it needs to be super detailed, it needs to be a functioning prototype, And it's outside of the level where you want to learn something, then that's where you need to bring on a professional and hire a designer or hire a firm that can actually walk you through that process. Because most likely, in order to get a prototype to that level, you're going to have to go through all the design process of figuring out the kinks and issues, because a prototype won't work if you don't have it designed right. You'll end up with a prototype that doesn't work. So there's these design thinking and design process that has to happen between where you're at right now with an idea and where you want to be with a fully functional prototype. So, you know, that's your range, and that's a broad range. You know, physical product development is a huge range. You know, something as simple as this little key Keychain right here, the key holder, prototyping, prototype that out of paper super easily in about 30 seconds, done. You know, more complicated devices, you know, for example, my nice mouse here is going to take a little bit more, but maybe I use foam. There's quite a bit of foam, modeling foam, clay, things like that that you can play with in order to prototype. And honestly, that's what designers use. So Don't be afraid of your prototype. If you are making your own, don't worry about it being perfect. It's a prototype. Everybody knows it's a prototype. Anybody that expects perfection out of a prototype is really asking for a one-off custom product, and they're going to pay for it in order to get that quality. So those are some just high-level ideas and topics of how to prototype. Hey, thanks for watching. We really appreciate our viewers, and if you haven't subscribed yet, please do subscribe to our channel so you can get more great videos like this in your feed. And like the video. If you want to learn more about the Peterman Design Firm, please check us out on our website, petermanfirm.com. You'll find link and information in the description, and of course we're on all social media as well, so check us out there. All right, thank you. Thank you.
