Special Message Regarding the Covid-19 Situation
First of all, we wish good health and safety to our entire community. These are challenging times that we are facing; however, we can all work together to help ensure a healthy and productive time for all of us. Cimquest has been very aggressive over the past several years in creating a service and support infrastructure so that in the rare event that such a situation occurs, we would be completely effective at supporting our valued customer base. Prior to the circumstance that we all now face, Cimquest had 39% of our employees working from home and another 27% able to be fully functional working remotely. With 2/3rds of the company being fully functional at home and most of the remaining third able to work part or most of the time remotely, we are just maintaining a skeleton staff at just a few of our several offices to conduct mission-critical functions such as product fulfillment, shipping, and other services. Thanks to the cloud-based technology that we have been using for many years we are able to support and transact business as usual. Our VOIP phone system allows us to handle our calls as efficiently as if we were in our facilities. We will [...]
Update on Cimquest and our response to COVID-19
Update on Cimquest and our response to COVID-19 Like all of you, Cimquest has been closely monitoring information and updates regarding the COVID-19 from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), World Health Organization (WHO) and New Jersey Department of Health (NJDOH). Our focus is on making certain that our work environment is safe for employees and customers so that we can position ourselves for continued support of your businesses. Cimquest was an early adopter of cloud based technology and 95% of our operations can be conducted via a remote workforce. Our training classes are conducted with a maximum of 8 students and all equipment will be deep cleaned between each class. Cimquest has been a leader in offering a remote training option where the student can participate in every live class utilizing their own equipment. Each of our office locations has anywhere from 2 workers to 22 and; therefore, are not likely to be at significant risk for exposure due to our small population and the average number of cases in each state where our offices are located of less than 50. We are diligently cleaning all common surfaces and limiting unnecessary travel for our employees. If the virus cases increase significantly we [...]
HP Jet Fusion 3D Printing Solution
Gain new levels of cost predictability with the flexibility to scale your business as you grow In this business climate, there are many advantages to a “pay-as-you-go” business model when the focus is on outcomes. Capital expenses are transformed into operating expenses, spread over time. Paying on a usage basis puts the focus on your business results rather than equipment or transactions. HP Jet Fusion 3D Printing Solutions are reinventing design and manufacturing. From accelerating design cycles to printing full-color functional parts, to running efficient volume production with repeatable part quality. HP 3DaaS Plus Low start-up costs for in-house functional part production. This all-inclusive—accelerate your design cycles with the HP Jet Fusion 340 3D Printer, supplies, and services. What's Included with the Plus HP JF340 and miscellaneous hardware Installation, training and shipping Automatic replenishment of HP 3D supplies HP 3D Printing Care Services, including remote and onsite support Online dashboard for easy, convenient tracking of billing and usage HP 3DaaS Base Convenient pay-per-use Available with purchase of the HP Jet Fusion 5200/4200 Series 3D Printing Solutions and HP Jet Fusion 500 Series 3D Printers. What's Included with the Base Automatic replenishment of HP 3D supplies HP 3D Printing Care Services, including remote and [...]
AMUG Announces 2020 Scholarship Winner
photo courtesy of www.tctmagazine.com The Additive Manufacturing Users Group Scholarship Committee has recently named this year's recipients of its two annual scholarship awards. The scholarships, which give one student and one teacher the opportunity to attend the annual additive manufacturing (AM) conference, are designed to recognize educational leaders with a passion for 3D printing technology. We are proud to continue our support for this scholarship that provides the opportunity for highly motivated students to earn the opportunity to attend the Additive Manufacturing User Group (AMUG) conference. The Guy E. Bourdeau Scholarship was founded by Guy’s wife Renee Bourdeau, and is financially supported by Cimquest. This year, congratulations goes to Katherine Schneidau, a mechanical engineering graduate student at the University of Louisville for winning the scholarship. Schneidau's first interaction with AM was through an engineering co-op at the U of L Rapid Prototyping Center where she gained experience with a range of processes and found her passion for the field. Applying her hands-on technical know-how, Schneidau has created new process parameters for both polymers and metals, and in one particular project, developed a flexible recoater blade for use in the EOS M270 and M290 systems. As a graduate student, Schneidau has been actively [...]
SolidWorks 3D Texture
Have you ever found yourself having to create some type of texturing to your 3D models, whether it be dimples, knurls, bumps like the image below? A straightforward way to accomplish this is to create the planes, sketches and features that will give you that type of shape, then use some type of pattern to complete the 3D texture over the complete surface. Although that works, SolidWorks has come up with a quicker way to accomplish the same task. The tool is called Solidworks 3D Textures, and it works in a two-step process. First, you map a textural appearance to a model using texture mapping functionality. In the mapping tab, you are able to modify the mapping settings, as well as the size and orientation. The second step involves using the 3D Texture tool to define the geometry for the textural appearance and create the 3D texture feature. In the property manager, you are able to define things like Texture Refinement, Texture Offset Distance, and Maximum Element size. Click the green checkmark, and the 3D texture has been created for you! As you can see, SolidWorks continues to give you tools that can quickly and efficiently help you create complex 3D textures, in [...]
How to Choose the Right 3D Scanner – Part 2
In part one of this “How to Choose the Right 3D Scanner” series we discussed scanning accuracy and resolution. In addition to these attributes, many scanners can also capture what we refer to as texture or color texture. Very often, when scanning a shape, color texture isn't terribly important, unless the scans will be used for 3D color printing, to display on a website, or for use in AR/VR. But in too many cases, color texture is used to hide poor resolution scans. Think of how much detail there is in a human ear. This is a scan of an ear with the texture turned on. To the casual eye, this looks like an excellent scan. The underlying mesh resolution is hidden by the color texture. But watch what happens when we simply turn off the texture. It almost doesn't look like a human ear anymore. With the triangles of the mesh turned on you get a sense as to why this is a very poor resolution mesh. If you consider the mesh file as approximating a shape with triangles, realize how much smaller the triangles would need to be in high curvature areas on the ear in order for this scan to [...]