Verisurf Mesh Utilities for 3D Data Preparation
The powerful Verisurf Mesh utilities allow you to create high-quality meshes for 3D printing, machine from STL, and use as nominal models for inspection. Power Mesh simultaneously can create, merge, clean up, refine, smooth, hole fill, and extend the mesh. Advanced options control mesh density and can close mesh volume. Power Mesh can create water-tight mesh, a natural first step in any reverse engineering workflow. Stitch Mesh connects discontinuous meshes along their common boundaries while maintaining the original mesh definitions. It creates a single water-tight mesh from meshes that were imported from individual CAD surfaces. With Stitch, you can also reassemble portions of a larger mesh that were separated during editing and cleanup. The tolerance controls the allowable gap or overlap between adjacent meshes. This works without having to remesh or filter the constituent meshes. Quad Mesh creates triangles from the quadrilaterals that follow the flow of the mesh curvature. It’s used to improve mesh quality prior to surfacing and to align the mesh with the part edges. Settings enable control of density and smoothing and allow sharp creases to be maintained. Even random unstructured scans from a hard probe can be made uniform to improve surfacing. Optimize Mesh reduces the overall size [...]
HP Partners With Solize to 3D Print Spares On-Demand for Vintage Nisan GT-RS
Japanese manufacturer SOLIZE has worked with multinational printing firm HP to 3D print spare parts for heritage models from Nissan’s NISMO line of sports cars. Using 3D modeling and HP’s Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) platform, SOLIZE’s engineers have been able to design and 3D print discontinued parts for vehicles such as the Skyline GT-R on-demand. Working as part of Nissan’s Heritage Parts program, the firms effectively demonstrated how the carmaker could benefit from digitizing its inventory, by reducing its warehousing costs as well as its industrial waste output. “We are seeing leaders of industry like Nissan recognize the massive cost implications of storage, molds and logistics for replacement parts,” said Jon Wayne, Head of Global Commercial Business for 3D Printing and Digital Manufacturing at HP. “Digital manufacturing is a viable, long-term solution for accelerating production, transforming supply chains and activating industries such as automotive.” “TOGETHER WITH SOLIZE, WE ARE FOCUSED ON HELPING BUSINESSES TRANSFORM THEIR MANUFACTURING WITH SUSTAINABLE, DIGITAL PRODUCTION.” SOLIZE has used HP MJF 3D printing to create spare parts for Nissan’s legacy NISMO sports cars. Photo via Nissan NISMO. 3D Printing to Boost GT-Rs Set up in 2017, Nissan’s Heritage Parts program is designed to provide owners of legacy [...]
How To Set Up My Mastercam Website Linking Utility
With the Mastercam software installed and your license codes activated it is a good idea to set up a user login and link your account to the My Mastercam.com website. Some of the advantages of being linked is access to the Mastercam Forum where users from all around the world discuss issues & ideas pertaining to Mastercam. You can sign up to try out the next generation of Mastercam through the Beta Program that offers the ability to work with new functions and utilities in the prerelease version. There is also the Tech Exchange where optional post processors and tool libraries can be downloaded. To set up the account, you will need to first create a user login and password. If you have already set up a login but haven’t yet linked your license you can skip this process. Fill in the required fields for your name, email address, create a password, and create the account. You will be sent a validation email where you can click on the link to validate. The My Mastercam website will require linking your license to the account. To create the linking code launch Mastercam. Go to the backstage area by selecting the File tab in the [...]
Introducing Geomagic Freeform and Freeform Plus
Cimquest is proud to announce the addition of the Geomagic Freeform and Freeform Plus organic modeling software products to our powerful line of Geomagic technology. Geomagic Freeform and Freeform Plus are commonly used in the medical industry for the design and development of appliances used during medical and surgical procedures and many users are virtually modeling very detailed artwork. Freeform can start with a blank screen and completely design an incredibly complex appliance or piece of art from scratch. It can also work from existing CAD data as well as from existing scan or CT scans which may be used to aid in the design development. The Geomagic comprehensive StructureFX toolset gives you the freedom to select existing patterns or create complex internal and external lattice structures from scratch for incredible designs. Advanced modeling tools may be used to create functional cages for applications such as custom medical implants. Below is a spine cage that was designed in Freeform Plus utilizing CT scan data. Incorporating the Touch or Touch X haptic devices presents the ultimate in expressive freedom and fast model design. Freeform and Freeform Plus work exclusively with the Touch and Touch X Haptic devices to deliver freedom of motion through the [...]
Tooling-free Manufacturing with Desktop Metal
Without the need to manufacture jigs, fixtures, or molds, engineers and designers can go from design to functional part in as little as a day. If needed, designers can print multiple versions of a part, then quickly iterate on the design based on functional testing results. The speed and accessibility of additive manufacturing allows design teams to go through dozens of design iterations in as little as a week. Once part designs are finalized, binder jetting technology makes it easy to go from printing one-off, low-volume prototypes to producing thousands or even up to millions of parts. Because there is no need for tooling or complex set-ups, manufacturers can produce a part one day, and switch to a new part the next, with no delay in production. Tooling-free Manufacturing Additive technology also enables DfAM principles by eliminating the need for hard tooling. Without the need to manufacture jigs, fixtures or molds, engineers and designers can go from design to functional part in as little as a day. If needed, designers can print multiple versions of a part, then quickly iterate on the design based on functional testing results. The speed and accessibility of additive manufacturing allows design teams to go through dozens of [...]
Controlling Tool Motion in Mastercam High Speed Raster Toolpaths
Let’s explore some different methods to control tool motion in the Mastercam High Speed Raster Toolpaths. In this example, we are going to use the Mastercam High Speed Raster toolpath to finish the top face of the angle and radius on the part shown below. Looking at the stock model you will notice that the part is roughed out and ready to be finished. We will start by launching the Raster toolpath from the 3D toolpath gallery. Reset the stock values and select the machining surfaces, holding the Shift key down to select all the tangent faces. Now we can select the tool, set the stepover, and set some normal leads for the linking moves. After the toolpath generated, we found a few issues with the cut motion. The first issue was the tool gouging the top surface. To resolve this, we opened up the parameters and added the top surface as an avoidance area. After regenerating, the tool no longer gouged the part. The next issue we found was the tool wrapping too far over the edge of the part. To solve this, we went back into the parameters and changed the steep/shallow angle limits. We set the high limit to 56 [...]