If this seems like a silly question, it’s not. We all know that prototypes are created to accomplish a variety of things such as testing the mechanical strength of a part, measuring heat dissipation characteristics, fit and whatever else may be required to ensure the success of the design before it goes into production.
Is the prototype being created for design confirmation or design testing? This is more than a semantic difference. Confirming a design may cause one to proceed through the prototyping process in a routine manner. The process becomes a formality tacked unto the tail end of the design process. It’s akin to a quality check at the end of a production run. You really don’t want to discover any problems because there isn’t much time left before the part has to go into production.
However, when one enters the prototyping process with the intent to truly test the part rigorously in order to uncover any potential shortcomings, then you are truly entering the process without preconceived notions. This means you don’t hold back. You push the performance envelope to discover under what conditions the part will fail. In essence, you are looking to fail the part to take a real measure of it’s design characteristics. You huddle with the design team to make sure nothing has been overlooked. You check and double check to make certain that the simulation was exacting.
To properly test your prototype you need time, and time is often in short supply when it comes to prototyping. And you want to get more than a handful of parts to make sure you have enough to go around. You don’t want to hoard your prototypes as though they were ancient artifacts, but get them into the hands of enough people involved in the project to make certain that each has sufficient parts for the testing process. Only after you have been able to measure the breaking point of your design can you truly be confident you know its complete performance characteristics.