ZEISS 3D Printing Precision Parts for Serial Production
For Carl Zeiss Optical Components, a subsidiary of Carl Zeiss Industrielle Messtechnik GmbH, precision matters – sometimes down to the hundredth of a millimeter. The company manufactures microscopes, multi-sensoric machines, and optical sensors for industrial measurement and quality assurance purposes. Organizations around the world use ZEISS machines to confirm that they produce literally perfect results, every time. That means 'reliability' and 'repeatability' are words to live by at the Wangen, Germany-based company. "The machines we produce are very accurate. Therefore, there is a lot of know-how in the assembly of those machines," Johannes Grimm, Manager Operational Excellence at ZEISS, said. Aligned, stable, successful Each machine that ZEISS produces is built to align light to optical measurement axes. This alignment is created with brackets and adjustment screws. Each machine, however, requires a different alignment, which meant the ZEISS Team had to complete the work manually. A ZEISS employee works with an industrial microscope “This is not a very stable process, and that’s a problem for us. We were looking for a better solution, and found that solution in 3D printing,” Johannes said. By measuring the angles in a specific machine, the ZEISS team can design and 3D print an adapter plate, which [...]
How To Succeed in the Challenging Aerospace Manufacturing Industry
Many of the advances in CAD/CAM software can help you to meet the challenges of succeeding in aircraft component manufacturing, but it can be difficult to navigate through all of your options. Mastercam has recently provided an overview on this topic that can be very helpful if you are in the aerospace industry. In this overview you will learn: Some of the advances in CAD/CAM that can specifically help aerospace challenges How CAD/CAM can benefit aircraft component manufacturing The partnership between software and tooling Specialized options in CAD/CAM for tough-to-machine parts Considerations for optimizing aerospace manufacturing operations Just click the button below and complete the short form to download the full whitepaper pdf.
Reverse Engineering a Fishing Reel to Improve Ergonomics
Let’s take a look at how reverse engineering can be used to improve ergonomics in product design. There are times when you may have the need to improve a design, but the legacy files are not available. In this case, your best option is to scan the old part and reverse engineer the CAD file. Once you have a feature-based CAD file, you can make any edits and improvements needed. That is exactly what our application engineer, Hayati Dirim, did after fighting for 45 minutes with a 70lb tuna on a recent fishing trip. He found the handle of his PENN Senator reel to be too small and difficult to work with, due to an uncomfortable grip. Rather than buying a new reel, he decided to reverse engineer it to improve the design. He first scanned the handle portion with a Freescan X7 and cleaned up the Mesh file. Then he used Design X to create a NURBS model of the actual handle and used that geometry to design a new handle on top of it. The idea was to have the handle snap over the existing design and secure it with quarter 20 heat-set inserts. Lastly, he 3D printed a prototype on [...]
Ignite Your Manufacturing Business
Would you like an action plan for using proven CAM software technology to ignite the immediate and long term success of your manufacturing business? The makers of Mastercam have put together a white paper that uses Mastercam as a primary example of CAM software, but the same concepts can be applied to any shop using any of a variety of up-to-date CAM software implementations. In this white paper, you will discover that the future of manufacturing depends on who you talk to. As with every topic that exists, there is a pessimistic view and an optimistic view. If you are ready to embrace the optimistic view, and ignite your business please use the button below to download the white paper. It includes simple steps that manufacturing businesses can take to achieve productivity increases along with total cost and lead time reductions by using their computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) capabilities more effectively.
How to Orient a 3D Scan for Machining
In this blog post, we’ll take a look at a scanned part in Geomagic Wrap and show how we can correct its orientation to prepare it for CNC machining. Very often, when we scan parts their orientation is not necessarily known. It could be skewed off plane relative to the angle that the scanner was used when the scans were taken. By cycling through some various orthographic views, you may find that your scan is pretty far out in terms of being square to the plane. In order to take a model like this into Mastercam to generate toolpaths for machining, it would be necessary to square it up. To do that, first, go into the Features menu and hoover over Planes. Wrap has a very useful feature called Best Fit Planes. In this example, we selected the triangles on the top face and then selected Apply Best Fit. This produces a plane that is best fit to the top surface. Using this method, we were able to define several more planes which can be seen under features (shown below). The top plane is labeled plane 1. We also have two side planes, as well as the opposite side plans representing the front [...]
Mastercam Solutions for Moldmaking Productivity
Mastercam includes numerous prep tools to help moldmakers fix models quickly and cleanly, patch holes, and correct errors in CAD models. These software advancements for moldmaking ensure the mold can be used in production as quickly as possible, by reducing the occurrence of common problems that cause delays. The primary focus is the moldmaker’s need for productivity that extends throughout the entire process, driving the trends seen in CAD/CAM software development—faster on the machine, faster off the machine, and highest possible quality. Embracing the growing trend of connectivity in manufacturing, Mastercam’s new suite of tools helps software, machines, and shop floor processes to talk to one another. With CAM, the connections to tooling libraries, inspection, shop monitoring, and a variety of other items are all part of making sure shops are ready for the shift to smart, digital manufacturing. It all begins with CAD. Shops have an increasing need for specialty CAD tools that help to turn a concept or part model into a production mold. This requires design tools for model prep, solid model repair, gap filling, fixture creation, and highly focused needs such as electrodes, core/cavity model separation, and parting line creation. All things that should happen before a tool even [...]