Metal 3D Printing is Spicing Up Food & Beverage Equipment
Desktop Metal has compiled the top 5 reasons we see the food and beverage industry moving to metal 3D printing. While mentions of 3D printing for food may bring to mind chocolate extruded into cool decorative shapes, additive manufacturing is actually transforming the industry behind the scenes – making food and beverage processing equipment safer, more productive, and delivering all-new innovations to the nearly $60 billion industry. If you’ve ever watched an episode of “How it’s Made” on Discovery TV, you’ve seen the complexity of cleaning, cutting, mixing, swirling, layering, stretching, shaping, or molding of food or beverages in solid, semi-solid, or liquid states. And that’s all before they get packaged by complex assembly lines that often resemble a Rube Goldberg machine. In all, the food and beverage industry is a symphony of hundreds of thousands of complex mechanical parts and assemblies that perform tasks that must also meet strict standards for quality and sanitization. Metal parts, often made of stainless steel, are an industry standard material for that safety reason. But making and shaping all of those complex metal parts comes with challenges, and this is where 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, offers value-added solutions. Building parts layer-by-layer eliminates many [...]
Using Mastercam Simulation
Is third-party G-code simulation software necessary to safely run Multiaxis? The short answer is no, especially not starting out. Fundamentally, when we post out to our NC code, we are going from vectors in space to motion commands for our machines, with all their linear and rotary axes. The post processor is translating that motion into something that a specific machine can understand. In the past, this is where third-party simulation and verification software has been important; checking to ensure that the post output is predictable and safe. If you are starting out today, the best way to ensure this accurate translation is to start with a solid post processor. With Mastercam, we even have post processors that can be linked directly to our simulation to further enhance the accuracy of the on-screen motion in relation to the real-world physical machine motion. Mastercam's in-software simulation can be broken down into three levels: Backplot, Verify, and true Simulation. In Backplot, we are checking the toolpaths by driving the tool around on the screen with no collision or stock considerations. In other words, all we are doing at this first stage is guiding the tool along the path it’s going to take, to examine the [...]
A Tribute to Mike Sljaka
The Cimquest family woke up on Monday, Mar 13, 2023, to the news that our beloved colleague and friend, Michael Sljaka, had succumbed to his longtime battle with cancer on Saturday, March 11th. Mike worked for Cimquest as a Senior Applications Engineer since the acquisition of Services Four Automation in October of 2011 where he worked since August 2007. Mike quickly became popular with customers and his fellow colleagues. He put in countless hours to provide a high level of customer service. His responsibilities ranged from Mastercam applications and training to CNC programming to being an integral part of the 2-Minute Tuesday video series. Every task that Mike was involved in had the highest dedication to quality which he encouraged in others. He was the epitome of “If you are going to do something - do it right!” Mike was the best colleague a person could ask for and an inspiring key member of our Mastercam Team. He was very supportive and motivating as a co-worker and we always looked to him for his creative thoughts and ideas. But more than a wonderful colleague, Mike was an amazing person and friend. He was smart, funny, kind, deep, always ready to lend a helping [...]
Cimquest Adds Meltio to Their 3D Printing Lineup
Cimquest Becomes Meltio’s Official Sales Partner Cimquest is going to play a key role in the distribution and support of the Meltio metal 3D printing solutions in the North Eastern United States market, as an official sales partner. Meltio offers a pioneering metal 3D printing solution that enables industrial applications with a process built around welding wire, the safest, cleanest, and most affordable metal feedstock in the market. Cimquest will focus on building a supportive ecosystem for Meltio’s technology in the North Eastern United States territory partnering and driving business opportunities alongside technology centers, tooling machine companies, robotic integrators, academia, and industry. Rob Hassold, CEO at Cimquest says: "Cimquest is excited to partner with one of the top growth leaders in Metal Additive. We feel that the DED process fits well within our job shop customers' workflow and environment. The Meltio technology offers unique advantages compared to other metal printing technologies and will help to round out our metal additive offerings." Meltio proudly announces its first official sales partner in the North Eastern United States territory, Cimquest. Michael Humphrey, Sales Manager for North America at Meltio says: “We are thrilled to be working with companies like Cimquest as their expertise as well as [...]
Metrology Minute – Batch Processing
Control X is a powerful metrology product with dozens of inspection tools available including; 2D and 3D dimensioning, GD&T analysis, color maps, Whisker plots, and many more. After all of the inspection tools are deployed for a specific inspection plan, you can create a date and time-stamped report, serialized for a particular part scan. This ensures that the inspection report of a single-part scan against a nominal CAD model is correctly identified and stored. But how does this process work when you have 10, 100, or even 1,000 scans to inspect against the same nominal CAD model? Repeating the inspection process manually over and over again would be extremely time-consuming, not to mention very tedious. This is where the Control X Batch Processing comes into play! Batch processing is a workflow in Control X whereby you can launch an unmanned inspection process to be applied to as many part scans as required. How Does Control X Batch Processing Work? First, you prepare the inspection for the very first manufactured part scan. All of the inspection tools are deployed and applied to that very first part scan, including the all-important Initial Alignment followed by a Datum Alignment. The idea being the Initial Alignment will [...]
Mastercam 2024 Viewing Graphical Planes and Geometry Color with Toolpaths
A Display graphical elements button has been added to hole-making and multiaxis toolpath dialog boxes. This control allows you to show or hide graphical elements such as selected geometry colors and graphical planes, depending on the toolpath type. Mastercam 2024 Viewing Linking Parameter Planes When you create a hole-making toolpath, Mastercam can now display on-screen indicators of plane types and values. Use the Display graphical elements button to turn on graphical elements. Then, in the Linking Parameters page, select the planes whose indicators you want displayed in the graphics window, as shown in the following image. When you change values in the dialog box, Mastercam updates the graphical planes in the graphics window. You can also change the position and value of a plane by dragging its graphical representation in the graphics window, as shown in the following image. During this dragging, you can type a value into the box that appears with the gnomon. Additionally, you can drag the plane indicator to an AutoCursor point. By turning off the Display plane labels option in the Display graphical elements drop-down, you can remove the labels from the plane indicators, leaving you with a simpler display. When the labels are off, you can hover [...]