Drone Customization With 3D Printing
a reprint from https://www.lubrizol.com/ Breakthrough TPU enables innovator to better serve hobbyists In the world of manufacturing, it’s often difficult to make the numbers work when serving a niche market. When your market is a niche of a niche, the challenge becomes even greater. Yet, R3D Shifters is doing just that, successfully catering to the hobbyist sector of the non-commercial drone market. “These aren’t the people who run out and buy a drone right off the shelf,” explains Netanel Bellaishe, company co-founder and lead designer. “These are the folks who want to essentially build their own drone.” To help them do that, R3D Shifters designs and manufactures chassis and parts customers can complete with their own motors, control boards and other largely standardized components. To serve this narrow market efficiently, R3D Shifters relies on MJF 3D printing on the 4200 and the capabilities of the latest TPU (thermoplastic polyurethane) technology. Business could not have taken off with injection molding It would be possible to make many of R3D Shifters’ products with injection-molded plastic, but with nowhere near the efficiency necessary to be viable. “Simply creating a mold might cost between $50K to $100K, which would require running thousands and thousands of parts to [...]
Selecting Your Company’s First 3D Scanner
by Harry Foxman - a reprint from https://www.fabbaloo.com/news/lessons-from-cimquests-2021-xpand3d-event-part-one What to look for in selecting a 3D Scanner Over the past three decades, scanning technology has advanced immensely. It is now a helpful tool to be used in reverse engineering, inspection, and 3D printing. With a large number of different types of scanners from a variety of manufacturers on the market today, it is important that a company selects the correct one. Before beginning the search for a scanner, companies should have predetermined criteria mapped out. In order to narrow down the vast field of scanners on the market, there are several different steps to consider guiding you in the right direction. The first step is to determine what sizes of parts you want to scan. Are the parts large or small, mechanical or organic? For example, scanning a part to be used in a machine would require a drastically different scanner than scanning a feature on a body. The application of what is scanned also needs to be considered. An item can be scanned for a variety of reasons including reverse engineering, metrology, 3D printing, web content, and virtual reality. Additional software processing costs are also something that needs to be considered as [...]
Desktop Metal Qualifies 4140 Low-Alloy Steel for High-Volume Additive Manufacturing
The First Company to Qualify 4140 via Metal Binder Jetting for the Mass Production of Strong Steel Parts That Withstand High Impacts, Temperatures and Mechanical Stresses Desktop Metal, a leader in mass production additive manufacturing (AM) solutions, today announced it has qualified the use of 4140 low-alloy steel for the Production SystemTM platform, which leverages patent-pending Single Pass JettingTM (SPJ) technology designed to achieve the fastest build speeds in the metal additive manufacturing industry. Desktop Metal is the first and only company to qualify 4140 low-alloy steel for use with metal binder jetting systems, enabling its use in mass production end-use part applications. Desktop Metal is the first and only company to qualify 4140 low-alloy steel for use with metal binder jetting systems, enabling its use in mass production end-use part applications. This linear pneumatic piston is used to convert air pressure into rotary motion through a rack and pinion with 4140 providing the toughness and wear resistance required for this application. (Photo: Business Wire) Considered one of the most versatile low-alloy steels, 4140 is characterized by its toughness, high tensile strength, and abrasion and impact resistance. It is a critical all-purpose and heat-treatable steel used extensively in a variety of [...]
Organic 3D Modeling with Freeform
In this post, we’ll take a look at Geomagic Freeform, an organic 3D design software. Freeform offers a sculpting and design toolset to sculpt, detail and deform virtual models into any form you desire. In this example, we’ll focus on Sub D Modeling. This Technique is used to create detailed modeling from a polygon mesh framework. Through Sub D modeling, you’re not modeling the actual surface or solid, you’re shaping the solid by manipulating the surrounding Control Cage. In this example, we have a 6 faced cube. Our underlying surface has 6 faces as does our Control Cage. If we take the surface model and click level 2, it divides each face into four faces and averages the positions with all the adjacent faces. We’re left with a new surface model, with 24 faces. At the next level, we quadruple to 96 faces. And as we go to level 5 and even 6, the faces get smaller and smaller until we get to the point where our model looks like a sphere. By increasing the numbers of faces, we can create very fine details in certain areas and have very coarse details in other areas. Now let’s take a look at the Control [...]
Desktop Metal Studio or Xact Metal XM200 3D Printing System?
How to make the best 3D Printing choice for your application First up, let’s talk about the Desktop Metal Studio System for low-volume or functional prototype 3D metal parts: What is unique about the Desktop Metal Studio System? The Desktop Metal Studio System is an end-to-end process with a software-managed workflow (Fabricate) to ensure your success. It utilizes a 3D technology called Bound Metal Deposition (BDM), which is comparable to one of the most widely known plastic 3D printing processes, Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM). The Studio System Printer comes with two ancillary system components depending on the chosen setup. The first is the Debinding unit which removes binding agents from printed parts and the second is a large-capacity sintering furnace that requires no special venting and is safe to touch. The entire system is considered office-friendly and calls for no special powder handling. The newly released Studio 2 has reformulated consumables to further simplify the process by cutting out the debinding unit completely and the burn out occurs in furnace. Desktop Metal Studio System provides a new strategy to achieve an end-use metal part. Unlike traditional machining or tooling to cut a block of metal to create a metal part, the Studio System [...]
Upcoming Desktop Metal Webinar – Design for Additive Manufacturing
The next generation of 3D printing has arrived - Desktop Metal + nTopology Over the next decade, additive manufacturing will enable new products to feature unprecedented levels of complexity, be 30-50% lighter, and be mass-customized to each local market. Join this event on June 16, 2021 from 11AM - 1PM EDT to learn about how you can start realizing some of these benefits today, from tips and tricks when designing parts for 3D printing in CAD, to next-generation technologies like topology optimization software to unlock the full potential of 3D printing in metals, polymers and elastomers. Register Here