Hybrid manufacturing approach delivers cooler tools

whitePaper | March 17, 2022

Manufacturing industry professionals must corral and understand massive amounts of data from many systems to drive operational efficiencies, higher levels of service, supply chain resiliency, and ultimately a complete view of the business. Having the ability to explore the impact of and interplay among changes in production efficiency, product quality, customer demand, and service excellence isn’t possible without visibility into data and meaningful data analytics. This “big data” approach to manufacturing operations and supply chain optimization can deliver big results and is at the heart of the digital transformation initiatives of many industrial companies.

whitePaper | January 9, 2023

Silicone rubber has many applications, from hearing aids to handles and grips on consumer goods. This report provides an overview of 3D printed tooling for silicone part production, including two part injection molds, overmolds, compression molds, and eggshell molds. These methods can be employed for the prototyping of soft silicone products, small-batch production of customer beta units, or production of custom end-use goods. A step-by-step guide is provided for producing a silicone keychain with an encapsulated Apple AirTag, employing mold design best practices from several Formlabs product design customers. We also present information about successful material workflows from Formlabs users, including silicone-resin compatibility and recommended mold releases for both tin and platinum cure silicones.

whitePaper | December 11, 2021

Developing products for an increasingly complex world certainly challenges or even exceeds engineering capabilities. Many factors impact complexity such as connectivity, security, safety, product variants, development velocity, reliability and quality,Many argue tha the major driver to better manage this complexity is the engineering paradigm of Industry 4.0.

whitePaper | June 8, 2020

Before cobots and other fast-deployable robots, many automated manufacturing cells incorporated only fixed or dedicated tooling rather than solutions that allow for changes or updates. An advantage of fixed automation is that it allows for reliable and high throughput, but it also tends to be custom engineered towards a specific process. Any changes in the workpiece or production process often mean redesigning large sections of the fixed automation system or even starting completely over from scratch.

whitePaper | July 26, 2023

In recent years, considerable progress has been made in the field of amorphous metals, also known as metallic glasses. Here, new insights were gained into the composition of alloys in order to achieve a better glass forming ability and thus enable larger components. While the first amorphous alloys usually consisted of two elements, the currently most promising amorphous alloys often consist of four to five elements. Occasionally zirconium-based alloys show the best glass-forming ability, with which the largest component dimensions can be realized.

whitePaper | July 29, 2023

Your design engineers are masters at coming up with elegant solutions to challenges. But they probably aren’t familiar with the cuttingedge manufacturing technologies, processes, and materials that can transform those solutions into feasible medical components and products that are cost-effective to produce and valued by end-users. That often results in a disconnect between design and manufacturing that can cost you both time and money.