Imperial vs. Metric Measurements in Manufacturing and CNC Machining
Ask the average American to estimate how long something is, and they will probably answer in inches, feet, or yards. If you ask someone anywhere else in the world, though, the answer will probably be in millimeters, centimeters, or meters. Today, only three countries use the British Imperial System almost exclusively—the United States of America, Myanmar, and Liberia. The imperial system dates to the seventeenth century and is comprised of units like pounds, feet, and acres. It was based on using ones own body to measure. An inch was meant to be the width of the thumb, a mile was meant to be one thousand paces, and a cubic inch was meant to be one mouthful. Naturally, measurements vary widely among people and there is no intuitive way to convert among most units. While it was useful hundreds of years ago, the system is less so now. The metric system, or the Système International (SI), is nearly as old. It was invented in France in 1795 to deal with confusing conversions. The meter was initially based on the length of 1/10,000,000 of a quadrant of Earth’s circumference, or one ten millionth of the shortest distance from the North Pole to the equator passing [...]
Desktop Metal Redefines Woodworking With New Wood 3D Printing Technology
reprint from https://3dprintingindustry.com/ Desktop Metal has launched its subsidiary Forust, a brand focused on 3D printing functional end-use wood parts via binder jetting. The Forust process works by upscaling waste byproducts from the wood manufacturing and paper industries (sawdust and lignin). By mixing these byproducts with a special bio-epoxy resin composite, the company can create sustainable 3D printing materials compatible with Desktop Metal’s binder jet technology. With the launch, Desktop Metal is now offering architects, designers, and manufacturers a new route to custom wood part production, whether it be for home decor or luxury architectural applications. Although it may seem like a late April Fools’ joke at first, customers can already visit the Forust store page to order one of the company’s ready-made, 3D printed consumer home goods pieces. The first batch of products is being offered as part of an exclusive collection by Swiss industrial designer Yves Béhar. William McDonough, a renowned architect and leader in sustainable development, stated, “The Forust technology allows us to take something that was previously wood waste and re-materialize it into exquisitely beautiful and useful things. We are honoring the cellulose and lignin of the trees by rearticulating them into assets for present and future generations. By [...]
Nexa3D Expands Partnership with BASF Forward AM
Ultrafast Photoplastics for Rapid Prototyping Nexa3D, the maker of ultrafast stereolithography production 3D printers, recently announced that it has expanded its partnership with BASF Forward AM to deliver three new ultrafast photopolymer materials through its expanding Nexa3D channels globally. Nexa3D’s collaboration with BASF Forward AM leverages their combined capabilities to deliver faster additive-manufactured prototypes across multiple industries, leveraging the 20X productivity advantage of its ultrafast NXE 400 3D printer. No other manufacturing process offers as many possibilities for greater design agility, supply chain resiliency and rapid implementation at every phase of the product lifecycle. Combining Nexa3D’s productivity with Forward AM’s rapidly expanding suite of tailor-made photopolymer formulations makes it possible for customers to rapidly design a wider range of parts such as housings, enclosures, pipes, packaging products, and footwear components with greater performance and functionality. x45-NATURAL is a tough material that is ideal for models and functional prototypes requiring high strength and durability. Capable of much higher print speeds than current materials, x45-NATURAL features excellent out-of-printer properties with robust print styles to ensure high first-time build success. Supporting a wide variety of applications with short processing times, x45-NATURAL’s draft build mode enables companies greater flexibility within their manufacturing processes. To learn more about [...]
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Verisurf Expanding Capabilities on the Mastercam Platform
Today’s manufacturers want and need more seamless integration between design, build, inspection, and reporting. They need a more complete design-build solution. These solutions must be clean with continuity of data and support for downstream applications. Verisurf Software has been a Mastercam strategic partner for 25 years, delivering customers quality inspection, reverse engineering, toolmaking, and assembly guidance solutions, all built on top of the Mastercam platform. When Verisurf is activated, it appears in the ribbon bar of Mastercam. This provides a completely integrated user experience for customers to go from Reverse Engineering to CAD to CAM to CAI all on the same software platform. Verisurf customers range in size and scope, from the largest aerospace, defense, automotive, energy and industrial OEMs and their global supply chains, to large and small job shops. For these customers, quality inspection and other measurement applications are quickly moving in the direction of model-based definition (MBD), which is at the core of all Verisurf solutions. When employing an MBD strategy, the CAD model is the inspection nominal to which all parts are measured and inspected against. MBD keeps the all-important digital thread intact, closing the loop on design to manufacturing to inspection and quality reporting. Should a part need [...]
Metrology Minute May
The Benefit of using GD&T and a Positional Tolerance vs +/- Tolerances When creating a part like the one below, the intent of the four holes is likely to fasten this component to another in the final assembly where the round holes will accept round fasteners. We want to look for a way to maximize our tolerance to provide as few scrapped parts as possible. A typical dimensioning scheme using +/- tolerances might look something like this, defining the hole’s locations off of the adjacent flat surfaces. Furthermore, consider the datums as playing a key role in how the part will fit inside the final assembly. The datums allow the designer to simulate the part in the assembly. Consider datums A and B below. Now consider how the hole’s location tolerance is placed as +/-.050”. This created a tolerance box of .1” x .1”, surrounding the ‘perfect’ hole center. Therefore, any manufactured holes where the center points fit inside that square will represent an in-spec hole location. But now, consider any of the four corner points of the box, representing the extreme location that still fit the tolerance conditions. Our goal in manufacturing is to provide as much acceptable tolerance as possible to [...]