Category: Advanced Manufacturing

  • Breaking Down the Wall between Design and Manufacturing

    Product design has evolved over the years to include much more than just designing a 3D model. Controlling part revisions, collaboration, analysis, light weighting, drawings and more are now just some of the tasks in product design. Tools for product design have become better with increased functionality and interoperability with each other. Unfortunately, for many…

    Advanced Manufacturing

  • Liquid Rapid Prototyping Might Bring More Speed to the 3D Printing Industry

    Additive manufacturing has taken off in recent years, but two main barriers to entry still remain. Start up cost for purchasing machines is one major hurdle for smaller manufacturers, however, this hurdle is slowly coming down. The far more hindering barrier to additive adoption is that of speed. For most mass manufacturing applications, additive manufacturing…

    Advanced Manufacturing

  • The Joining of Two Industries: Milling and 3D printing

    3D printing and Milling accomplish the same things: creating a part from a base material – except they work in completely opposite ways. While you likely understand the basic concepts of each, combining the two is proving to be highly beneficial to each side. In a more traditional sense, 3D printing and milling work together…

    Advanced Manufacturing

  • Inspection for Additive Manufacturing

    Inspection for Additive Manufacturing Composite materials are increasingly used to create products with significant advantages over traditional alternatives, but simply replicating an existing design in a new material squanders the potential. Composite materials are anisotropic, meaning that the properties are not the same in all directions and axes, and this provides enormous flexibility to optimize…

    Advanced Manufacturing

  • Combining Additive and Subtractive Techniques for Hybrid Manufacturing

    For many years, additive manufacturing seemed like it was going to be the future of all manufacturing industries. Most of this can be chocked up to hype around the new technology. In reality, the future of additive lies in a hybrid manufacturing system, one that combines additive and subtractive techniques for ultimate optimization. When we…

    Advanced Manufacturing

  • How the Tool Helix Affects Manufacturing

    Cutting forces on an end mill have axial and radial components that affect how it functions. The radial component often leads to vibrations and the axial component affects the force of the mill against the holder. These components are varied by changing the helix angle on a tool, and different angles are better for different…

    Advanced Manufacturing

  • What Materials are Used to Lightweight Cars?

    Car manufacturers are constantly pushing to create the lightest cars possible to increase speed and power. So, what materials are most common when an automotive designer needs to cut weight? The goal in lightweighting a car is to increase performance and efficiency while maintaining safety and comfort. Roughly speaking, when a car’s weight is decreased…

    Advanced Manufacturing

  • How Manufacturing has Changed in the last 15 Years

    Manufacturing is an industry that sees constant growth and change, but in the past 15 years, the industry has made drastic shifts that will forever shape its future. The manufacturing industry affects nearly every facet of everyday life, and companies are constantly seeking ways to optimize processes and decrease costs. While this tends to be…

    Advanced Manufacturing

  • Top 10 Reasons your Job Shop Should Check Out Fusion 360 Today

    If you own or work in a job shop with CAM software whose maintenance is expensive, and getting pricier, you should consider Fusion 360. It may be able to replace some or all of your current CAD/CAM systems in use. Where it makes sense in your workflow, implement Fusion 360 for a solution that is both…

    Advanced Manufacturing

  • Design for Manufacturing, or – Is it Millable?

    Can you make this? It’s one thing to design something, but can it actually be made? That’s what design for manufacturing is all about. First, there’s the question of whether it can be made at all. George Lucas may be able to design a “Death Star” but that doesn’t mean it can be manufactured with…

    Advanced Manufacturing

  • Fabrication and ERP: Benefits of Working Together

    Connecting your entire organization makes good sense for any business, and fabrication shops are no exception. Managers are more effective when they can see all operations, from design to distribution, in one system. This leads to faster decision-making, more efficient processing and fewer mistakes. That’s why more and more manufacturing companies are connecting their manufacturing solutions…

    Advanced Manufacturing