Additive manufacturing made a splash in the consumer market nearly a decade ago, but 3D printing has been around much longer than that. Now that 3D printers are available and functional for anybody with the internet and $200, they have become a necessary tool in most engineering environments. But what about manufacturing? Metal 3D Printing…
Advanced Manufacturing
CNC machines and automation have long been the bastion of success for growing shops. When a business can afford to add these tools to their shop, it usually means that they have had enough business to grow. But adding automation isn’t just for the major shops anymore. In the past, shops had to rely on…
Advanced Manufacturing
Both big and small manufacturers have a need to be more efficient. After all, the more efficient you can be, the more parts/products you can make, which means more money for your business. So what are some of the most helpful tools to make you more efficient? Feeds and Speeds There’s a number of ways…
Advanced Manufacturing
There is a lot of shroud and mystery around the process of tool and mold making. Creating molds for production is one of the more pricey investments a business can make, though it will save time and money down the road. So, why is mold making so hard? A lot of the mystery comes from…
Advanced Manufacturing
Innovative manufacturing can be anything from intelligently using age-old technology to adapting processes to new technologies. Machining has been around since the mid-nineteenth century… even NC (which eventually became CNC) machining has been a thing since the 1940s and 50s. Workholding and tooling, as well as improved CAM-generated toolpaths and machine capabilities, have helped these…
Advanced Manufacturing
For a very long time, manufacturing has been a world of high quantities and proprietary techniques. It didn’t matter how the work got done, it just needed to get done (en mass and on time). Now, in a world of ever-increasing production quotas, we are constantly looking for ways to improve production efficiency and finding…
Advanced Manufacturing
In short, yes. Machining titanium is often billed as the pinnacle of a machine tool’s capabilities, but really it’s less about the machine itself and more about the machinist. That doesn’t mean that tooling and your machine aren’t important, but like so many things in the world of machining, there are a million ways to…
Advanced Manufacturing
VR and AR are all the rage these days! It started out in the gaming industry, which is understandable, but it has transitioned into the worlds of marketing and B2B business. One of the earliest steps into the business world, that I witnessed, was modeling and designing architecture. This is pretty intuitive step, if you…
Advanced Manufacturing
Though it may not always feel like it, the world of manufacturing is always changing and adapting. Whether it’s logistics and sourcing or methodologies and time to market, there’s always a need to evaluate where your manufacturing and production are going. Industrial Manufacturing More traditional manufacturing is often reliant on the low-cost/high-quantity model. Whether your…
Advanced Manufacturing
In the past, the world of design was relegated to engineers sitting at drafting desks as they contemplated the calculus of parts and the physics of their components in the wild. Typically, designers would mock up their drawings and then pass the design to a machinist or toolmaker to develop parts for prototyping or production.…
Advanced Manufacturing