Here’s a manufacturing conundrum: What if you need to produce a part with tight geometric tolerances but have little lead time to spare? How do you build a 3D printed part and achieve tight tolerances at the same time? Some would say you need to machine the part, potentially sacrificing some material or geometric properties […]
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4 Simple Design Tips to Reduce the Cost of Your Part
You’ll save time and money if you begin with the end in mind. The core principle of machining is to remove everything that doesn’t look like the blueprint to get to the part. But the more material you have to remove, the more expensive the part gets—you’re not just wasting material, you’re also racking up […]
How 2D Drawings Help Manufacture Better Parts
Fact: 3D CAD technology makes the product design process up to 50% faster than using 2D drawings alone. But does that mean 2D CAD drawings are obsolete? It may surprise you to learn that while 3D CAD models have revolutionized product design, 2D designs still play a very important role in the manufacturing process. Engineers […]
Leverage of a Fancy Nature
I’d be the fist one to admit, a hose nozzle lever is not an earth shattering 3D Printing application, but a sturdier handle was sure needed. Oh, sure you could have dropped everything and gone to Lowe’s or Home Depot and just purchased a new one, but if you are in a time crunch with a project […]
Bon Appetit – 3D Printed Life Improvement!
Today we are helping a loved one diagnosed with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis). ALS is a neurodegenerative disease that weakens muscles and impacts physical function. I am sure that you remember the Ice Bucket challenge (www.alsa.org) to raise awareness, but you realized soon enough that the fight goes beyond ice buckets and frigid water. It […]
CNC Machining of Aluminum Parts
We do a lot of machining of aluminum parts in different shapes and sizes. Some are machined to very high precision, but others have less demanding tolerance requirements. These brackets are machined in 6061-T6 Aluminum on our Haas Machining Center. We made two sizes to try out different configurations. When we do machining, we do […]
What is needed to build prototypes, and problems we have encountered.
During the course of a year, there are always many inventors and companies that contact us for prototype creation. Some have paper napkin sketches and want a new product engineered and prototyped, or a 3D version printed. Others may have products that are already engineered and they want us to build a prototype. Let’s go […]
Photo renderings of your ideas
You know what your thing should look like, and what it should do. It is probably something you have come to know like a good friend. You have probably spent hours of creative time working on it, thinking about it, and revising it over and over again. “Obsession” is a word that usually describes it. […]
New device saves money for truckers and fleets
Rapid prototyping helped us develop a better tool for Slack Dog Tools. Sometimes we find ourselves developing products to solve problems that we did not know existed. Trailers have electrical connectors that connect the lights on the trailer to the truck hauling it. Commercial trucks use a universal 7-pin socket connector for this purpose. The […]
Rapid tooling, rubber grommet
“Yes, but I need parts NOW!!!” A last-minute cable design change required a different grommet to protect a cable as it passed out of an enclosure. Nothing was available off-the-shelf that had the shape characteristics we needed. In this case, we needed the durability, heat resistance, and strength and there were no rapid prototyped material […]