Solve Real-World Manufacturing Challenges Using the Autodesk Fusion 360 Extensions

DYLAN SMITH: Welcome, everyone, to our IU class 2022-- myself and Kieran walking through solving real-world manufacturing challenges using the Fusion 360 extensions. We're going to be looking at the Generative Design Extension, Nesting and Fabrication, and the Machining Extension, referencing customer testimonials about how they've used the technology within these extensions to solve their business challenges. OK, so before we get started-- the Safe Harbor slide. Imagine that we're sitting in the Autodesk offices, and anything that we say regarding the future of the product business decisions or purchasing decisions should not be made upon the information we give in this presentation.

So who are we then? So Kieran is a customer advocacy manager who graduated from Oxford Brookes University in mechanical engineering, started his career in the dental field using CNC machines to make implants-- similar to me-- joined Autodesk through the Delcam Acquisition early on in the mid-2000s, and then now spends his time within the customer engagement organization working with customers focusing on manufacturing.

Who am I? I'm Dylan Smith, a technical sales specialist working, of course, within the sales organization, currently studying at Coventry University. I'm doing an engineering degree. Like Kieran, as I said-- joined via the Delcam Acquisition in 2014, spent many years in a manufacturing environment, did an apprenticeship-- which, in the UK, is learning on the job, learning from some very senior and experienced engineers and machinists-- worked with Kieran up to very recently, again, focusing on manufacturing, and most recently, spend my time in the sales department focusing as a technical sales specialist.

KIERAN GILL: Now before we actually jump into some of those customer-specific stories, let's look at Fusion 360 and the core of the functionality that is offered. Fusion 360 offers a core functionality where you can perform CAD functions such as 2D drawing, 3D and assembly modeling, or mechanical and thermal simulations. It also gives you access to 2D, 3D, and multi-axis positional CAM and Work Coordinate System probing. And it also has additive tools for plastic additive Fused Filament Fabrication-- or FFF-- and various other fabrication tools.

Layered on top of that are extensions. These extend the core capabilities of Fusion 360 by adding in enterprise-grade features and services. Like Fusion 360 subscriptions, the access to these extensions is flexible, meaning customers can access what they need when they need it, and thus only paying for what they use.

In this presentation, the extensions we are most interested in are the Generative Design Extension, the Nesting and Fabrication Extension, and the Machining Extension. So why did we bring the extensions into Fusion 360? Three key reasons, really.

One was to extend our customers platform by eliminating disconnected tools and extending their workflows with specialized technologies all in one platform, as opposed to having several, which is more costly and has a steeper learning curve. Number two, to simplify our customer's manufacturing and design processes by improving operational efficiencies with automated and optimized workflows across teams to increase their design and manufacturing throughput and reduce the time it takes for our customers to get their products to market. And lastly, as I just mentioned, flexible access. The customer decides how and when they want to consume the technology to give them access to the more specialized bits of functionality that have come from the other products in the range.

DYLAN SMITH: So me and Kieran could sit here all day and tell you what we think of the extensions and the kind of benefits that they'll bring to your business. But more impactfully, we have customers who have been using our extensions religiously for a long amount of time and have seen tangible business benefits from these extensions. So the first company we are going to speak about is a company based out in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania called Conturo Prototyping.

Now Conturo are a fairly new company, and they started off with a modest 1,000 square-foot space in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but quickly outgrew the space they were in and graduated to a 17,000 square-foot shop. Now Conturo are not a huge company by any shape, but they are a fairly large job shop by normal standards. 10 multi-axis CNC machines and 3 CNC lathes allow them to serve multiple industries-- generally small to medium-sized components in industries such as robotics, aerospace, and the medical industry.

Now the extensions themselves-- can we jump back one there, Kieran? Sorry. The extensions themselves are, of course, an extended platform of core Fusion 360. Now the reason why Conturo started to explore the Machining Extension was because they wanted to get more out of what they--

[CLEARS THROAT]

--had. Sorry.

So if we look at the problems that they faced-- and we can see in the top left-hand side of the screen, anybody in industry might know that this component is not a general prismatic-sized billet. So for instance, it's not a cube, it's not a cylinder. And this poses a real skill that's needed to accurately, and quickly, and efficiently reference components like this on a CNC machine tool.

Now Conturo are receiving components which are casted, meaning they are close to net form shape, and they needed a tool which would allow them to autonomously, efficiently, and quickly set these components up. Not only that, Conturo are essentially a job shop at heart. So what they need is the most advanced technologies and hardware possible to ensure they're as competitive as they possibly can be in the marketplace. We all know that it's very competitive out there, and having access to the machine tools that they have along with the multi-axis technologies within Fusion allowed them to be more competitive. And we'll look at that a little bit later on.

Not only that, a big problem that I see in industry is people wasting time refining tool paths, going back into the tool path dialog and spending too much time trying to achieve perfection when, sometimes, it isn't necessary. And sometimes it takes a very long time to fine-tune the parameters to get the result they want. Not only that, we think about automation in the form of hole drilling. And we can see the components on the screen have a fair amount of holes. This is a very manual task in manufacturing, and in many CAM systems, we have tools within the Machining Extension which combat this.

So looking at all the problems that Conturo faced, let's look at the benefits that they've received from the Machining Extension and a more advanced manufacturing technology. I mentioned cast parts earlier being a typical form of stock material for them to get in. Setting up components which are close to the net shape of a fairly complex component is a very skillful task, considering the climate and the skill shortage we see. Conturo are not immune to this. So we provide tools within the Machining Extension, such as automatic part alignment, that allow our customers like Conturo to remove the skill in this task, to get more consistent efficient results with less scrap, and also get to the result that they are trying to get to much quicker.

I referenced the competitive marketplace and companies like Conturo trying to have an edge on their competitors. Now having access to 10 or 11 CNC multi-axis machines allows Conturo to have that edge when it comes to [INAUDIBLE] for work. They can use short, rigid tools to ensure minimum deflection and vibration, they can avoid steep vertical walls or deep vertical walls, they can avoid holding collisions. There's various benefits that Conturo received from being able to use the multi-axis technology. And that's essentially just being more competitive, more efficient, and producing better quality, higher standard components.

Again, earlier on, I mentioned people being perfectionists. And this is a very common trait within the industry. You can often see our employees spending far too much time trying to achieve tool paths which are far too tight to nominal CAD tolerances. And senior leadership don't like to see more time wasted than what is necessary.

So tool path modifications within the Fusion 360 extension allow companies like Conturo Prototyping to make post calculation modifications to refine, tweak, to essentially make higher quality safer, more efficient tool paths. And drilling-- when we think about drilling, we think about going through the machine tool controller and spending a lot of time making manual selections within Fusion 360 on different holes such as reamed, counterbored, tapped, clearance. This can be a lot of tool selection and a lot of manual selection.

Now hole recognition autonomously recognizes holes in 3 and 5-axis and applies the appropriate drills and processes to create that hole. So for instance, a counterbored hole requires a spot drill, a deep drill, and a helical mill to release the top, and this is exactly what it does in just a few click of the buttons. So don't take it from me. Patrick Fee himself, one of the main leaders at Conturo Prototyping, references that the time saving from the Machining Extension pays for itself in just a few weeks. Kieran, passing it back over to you.

KIERAN GILL: Thank you, Dylan. Ganas Manufacturing, like Conturo, also use an extension. In this case, they use the Nesting and Fabrication Extension. Let's look a little bit closer at Ganas Manufacturing.

They are a small startup-based company in Detroit that specialize in custom millwork and bespoke furniture for commercial and residential clients. Engineering these types of products from the ground up require quite complex 3D modeling skills, but the company needed a solution that wouldn't necessarily break the bank. Ganas Manufacturing found that Autodesk Fusion 360 provided all the capabilities they needed and more, including 2D CAD, 3D modeling, CAM, and CNC support, as well as the Nesting and Fabrication Extension. That dramatically reduced the time and effort involved in complex cabinetry projects.

Now Ganas Manufacturing really operates in the sweet spot that consists of design-driven projects that aren't necessarily a good fit for traditional larger shops. They are craftsmen by trade, so they naturally have a high attention to detail in realizing the vision of the architect or the designer. They typically excel at one-off statement pieces for both public and private spaces. On the shop floor side, they have a 3-axis as well as a 5-axis router, but also have a horizontal drilling and dowelling machine-- so a lot smaller than what we saw from Conturo.

On the screen, you can see some automated nesting of the carpentry sheets they use within a build volume in the top left. And on the top right, or kind of on the right-hand side, you'll see some actual design work of some of the custom made cabinetry within Fusion 360 that you can see they have modeled up. Bottom left, you can see some further examples of some of their custom millwork which is designed and manufactured by Ganas Manufacturing for various retail concepts. And again, this can be seen in the bottom left.

So why did Ganas Manufacturing start using the Nesting and Fabrication Extension? Well, three key reasons. They generally saved a lot of time with automated nesting.

One of the biggest benefits of using Fusion 360 and the Nesting and Fabrication Extension for CNC routing is that it automatically determines how to maximize the yield of sheet goods when accommodating a number of smaller pieces. There is a tremendously big gap in the woodworking and millwork industry when it comes to nesting, and nobody is doing it like Autodesk. So this is a real big plus for them.

Ganas Manufacturing actually goes on to say that the impact of the Nesting and Fabrication Extension has been huge for the shop, reducing expected scrap from 25% to just 5% on any given sheet. That is huge. The second reason is automating of the repetitive, really, mundane topics-- sorry, tasks-- that you would experience from this typical kind of job shop.

So before Fusion 360 Nesting and Fabrication Extension-- which autonests directly from 3D CAD models, by the way-- Ganas and his team not only had to figure out the nesting of these sheets manually, but also, they had to cut every sheet by hand with a saw. This was physically demanding, not to mention the fatigue factor for such a monotonous task. So the question really is, would you rather cut 50 sheets of metal or plywood, or would you assemble them-- or would you spend the time assembling them and making them look beautiful with your own craftsmanship? I know certainly which one I'd choose.

The Nesting and Fabrication Extension together with all of the CAM tools in Fusion 360 lets his team focus on delivering a high-end product with perfect fit and finish. Previously, Ganas Manufacturing were using a different program for nesting to make their cut lists, but that was still susceptible to human error. Imagine you type one number wrong, and now you've got 200 sheets that are 1/16 of an inch off-- huge calamity. So Fusion 360 and the Nesting and Fabrication Extension have eliminated those kinds of errors. Now they know it's 100% correct, and that's been a game changer for them.

And lastly is the ability to reduce production time and continually grow their business. Now they've done identical jobs with Fusion 360 and without Fusion 360, and the difference has been huge. Ganas Manufacturing goes on to say that it's lowered their costs and increased their profit margins whilst cutting their timeline in half. So that's cutting their timeline by 50%. Ganas often points out that what used to take a month can now be done in two weeks. They order everything pre-laid up, ready to go, factoring in that lowest scrap rate with nesting.

And they're not doing any more guesswork. They know exactly what they need. They plan to grow their business significantly in the next five years and believe they can do much more while maintaining an agile team using Fusion 360 and the Nesting and Fabrication Extension. OK. Again, that kind of home run key point there is they've managed to reduce expected scrap from 25% to just down to 5% for any given sheet-- so really huge benefits there.

DYLAN SMITH: So Brown & Holmes is the next company that we're going to take a look at, and Brown & Holmes are actually based within 20 miles of where I live in Birmingham. So they're based in Tamworth in the UK. And a little bit about Brown & Holmes before we get started is that they are turnkey workholding and subcontract machining solutions. So they essentially will take a fixture or a complex piece of workholding and design and manufacture that for a range of applications. Not only that, they'll also do subcontract job shop-like work.

So Brown & Holmes have a very rich history being founded in 1939 and having about 32 employees as of today. They serve many different industries. And I've actually worked with Brown & Holmes in the past, and they provide some incredible high quality workholding. You can see they care about the quality they provide from the types of machine tools that they have within their facility. So they have machine tools such as Doosans, Mazaks, MORIs, Colchesters, XYZ and Bridgeport-- a vast different array of manufacturers and, of course, controllers. Brown & Holmes are also looking at different manufacturing techniques such as additive to further increase their throughput and quality.

Now Brown & Holmes are very interesting. So a bit of background-- Brown & Holmes had a huge bottleneck within the company, and that bottleneck was dedicated programmers being a huge bottleneck to the production process. Now if you have five dedicated programmers, and they're a huge bottleneck-- they have too much work to do-- you often get situations where the guys running the machines on the shop floor are twiddling their thumbs, and the spindles are not turning. Now due to the naturally high price of other CAM systems in the market, Brown & Holmes didn't want to fork out the costs or the capital of onboarding all of the shop floor staff onto these CAM systems. So Fusion 360 and the extensions really reduced that barrier of entry that allowed the shop floor guys to be upskilled and adopt Fusion 360.

So what happens now is we've got an empowered workforce that are using Fusion 360 and advanced tools in the extension to reduce the throughput within Brown & Holmes, and now the dedicated programmers in the programming office are no longer the bottleneck. So Brown & Holmes-- the features that they're regularly using within the Machining Extension are the 4- and 5-axis capabilities that we have. So as of the July release in Fusion 360, we now have a comprehensive suite of multi-axis tools which are going to be able to resolve-- or they're going to be able to machine. Most of the components, people are turning to machines. And Brown & Holmes have found this as well.

So Neil Flynn-- one of the dedicated programmers, or one of the shop floor operators at Brown & Holmes, actually-- has used the wealth of experience within the Fusion 360 online community and has actually upskilled himself to use the multi-axis tools. He hasn't had any official onboarding training, which, of course, would add that element of advantage. But the online community, like the forums and the self-paced learning, has allowed him to upskill himself being a real self-starter.

Brown & Holmes face many of the problems that other manufacturers face, and these problems resonate between companies, between industries. Brown & & Holmes, very much like Conturo, do not like automatically selected holes. They used to do hole machining using something called MDI on machine tool controllers, which was very long-winded. It took longer than it should have done, and it was error-prone. Not only that, the other problem which resonates between Conturo and Brown & Holmes is perfection and people trying to get perfect tool paths like we do, but trying to use the dialog within the tool path and spending too much time there.

So let's look at how they benefit from the Machining Extension. I said that we now have a wealth of technology within the Machining Extension when it comes to 4- and 5-axis machining. Brown & Holmes are now able to machine more complex components and have more staff who are able to machine and program these components due to the entry barrier and the capability of the Machining Extension.

As I mentioned earlier, Neil would love formal training from one of our partners and old resellers, but the online community has allowed him to onboard himself quickly and get to a point where he can start to machine some of these complex components. Hole recognition has reduced the need for that long-hand programming on the machine tool controller, and they've seen a reduction in nonconformance, i.e. scrap, due to these kinds of enhancements in technology they have at their disposal. So it's very easy to make a mistake when programming long-hand, and it also takes much longer than senior management at Brown & Holmes would like.

And finally, tool path modifications-- this is the perfection element that we speak about, trying to create something which is how you imagined it before you started programming. Using features like tool path trimming allow people to be kind of lazy in an aspect and essentially do all of the removal after tool path calculation, avoiding the need to tweak parameters and wait around for the tool path to continue to calculate in that trial and error process. I think Paul from Brown & Holmes puts it best here, and I couldn't have said it better myself. "Fusion 360 has reduced the nonconformance reports by 34% and has helped double turnover" at Brown & Holmes, which is a huge business advantage to them and, of course, sees the health of the company continue to grow.

KIERAN GILL: Evolve is another company whom use some of the extensions. They specialize in engineering high quality bespoke systems and products, delivering cutting-edge solutions to motorsport, automotive, aerospace, medical, industrial equipment, and clean technology industries. Now the team at Evolve, run and managed by Matt Hill, has used Fusion 360 since 2016.

But like many companies, they assumed that generative design was too complicated, expensive and best suited for additive manufacturing only workflows. They were founded back in 2014 and have been using Fusion 360, as I said, since 2016. They utilize an array of subtractive machines and lathes like the Haas UMC-750, all the way through to metal additive machines like one-click metal 3D printers.

On the screen, you can see the subtractive process beginning, which results in a finished bulkhead component in the top left. The bottom left shows the exploded view of the bulkhead component in green, alongside its various parts like the hydraulic actuator, the electronics housing, and various other components. They are proudly British made and continue to evolve their products and prices with Autodesk Fusion 360 and the Generative Design Extension.

So let's look at some of the benefits they get from using the Generative Design Extension. Recently, the team applied generative design to an electrical hypercar component that you saw in the previous screen and quickly realized the time and cost savings to the design with artificial intelligence and the ease of manufacturing parts on CNC machines. Evolve used Generative Design Extension to do three things. One was really to improve the product performance, and they did this by lightweighting components.

And typically, whenever we're talking about lightweighting components, especially for an electrical hypercar, they don't come without their own presumptions. So things like organic, free flow or freeform, or radically departed from the original shape, come to mind. The challenge was to try to move that mindset to the fact that they could create something that was still suited to two and a half-axis milling. It was an obvious choice for them in hindsight. As we all know, with an electric vehicle, weight reduction is even more important to hit performance and range targets.

For the component they needed to manufacture, Evolve also focused on the requirements of the generative design in terms of strength, performance, and stiffness. But most critically, it had to be optimized for CNC milling. The second real benefit was that they were able to explore multiple design solutions driven by artificial intelligence-- AI. Now the generative design that they pushed the product through harnesses the power of machine learning and AI to explore more ideas more quickly.

With these parameters, as I mentioned before-- strength, stiffness, CNC milling optimization in Fusion 360-- the team could quickly see different options, choose their priorities and their preferred components. And once they selected their preferred solution from the full set of design options-- and what they landed on really came as a surprise to them. Matt Hill actually told me recently, it created something that was very interesting and aesthetically pleasing that perhaps they wouldn't have created if they'd done this via the traditional design method. And at the same time, Matt could then take the model, modify it, clean some surfaces and edges, add a human element to it for the finished and polished product ready for manufacturing.

And the last real benefit to them was reducing production costs. Generative design and the design extension help them to reduce the weight of the component by 40%. And in the end, the electrical hypercar component-- yeah, as I just mentioned-- was a staggering 40% lighter than when they started the project. And it was also completed in record time. And that's just the beginning with Evolve as they move generative design into a lot more of their products.

Matt goes on to say that we're really looking forward to having this as a tool in our toolbox for the future to make our design process more efficient and add value to our customers going forward. And again, don't take this from me. Matt Hill himself said that 40% of the weight of that original electrical component was removed with generative design in mind. And the fact that they're able to now machine that rather than just 3D print it with two and a half-axis machining has been an absolute game changer for them.

DYLAN SMITH: So what we can see now is a summary of the customer testimonials that we've just spoke over-- firstly, looking back at Conturo Prototyping and the benefits that they saw from the Machining Extension. Patrick said, "Considering all the time-saving features in the Machining Extension, it's clear the extension pays for itself in just a few weeks." So Conturo is seeing the extension as an investment opposed to an outgoing.

KIERAN GILL: Again, Richard Ganas from Ganas Manufacturing has seen them reducing expected scrap from 25% to just 5% on any given sheet. That's a huge amount of reduction on all of the scrap they have-- and then are starting to see some huge benefits in using some of these extensions.

DYLAN SMITH: So Brown & Holmes, again, who we mentioned earlier-- the turnkey workholding solutions provider-- reduced nonconformance reports by 34% and had a healthy doubling in turnover when they adopted the Machining Extension within Fusion 360.

KIERAN GILL: And lastly, we've seen Evolve utilized the Generative Design Extension to rapidly lightweight, whilst maintaining strength, stiffness, and efficiency of their parts, reducing the weight of some of these components by 40% and more, whilst being able to still manufacture these parts on traditional two and a half-axis machining technology. So I'm sure you can see that with a lot of these customers, they're seeing the benefits of using some of these extensions. And they're starting to see some significant productivity enhancements because of that.

We'd like to open up the floor now to some questions and answers. So please feel free to either raise your hand, and we'll get you to ask you a question. Thank you very much.