Manufacturing Tooling with Desktop Metal
About manufacturing tooling Tooling is a general term for components used in various manufacturing processes—including machining, injection molding, extrusion, stamping, casting, as well as workholding jigs, fixtures, and end of arm tooling. A single tooling mechanism may consist of several complex parts or one unique part. Tooling is used widely across all manufacturing processes. Though often created in-house by manufacturers, tooling may be outsourced to a specialty tooling shop when complexity or lead time exceeds in-house capabilities. The Challenge When a manufacturer gets a drawing or CAD model for a new product, the first thing that must be done is plan how the part will be manufactured—this plan almost always requires creating tooling. For traditional manufacturing methods, tooling fabrication demands significant non-recurring time, cost, and effort. Both to design the tooling, and then to manufacture it. Once tooling is created and volume production begins, manufacturing lines still need to be maintained, and may often need replacement parts as components wear out or break. To avoid downtime, those maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) parts need to either be warehoused for immediate use or produced very quickly to get the manufacturing line back up and running as quickly as possible. Many forms of tooling require [...]
Chaining Enhancements in Mastercam 2021
Let’s take a look at the new chaining enhancements in Mastercam 2021. There have been some improvements made to the wireframe chaining, the biggest one being the addition of the Display All Arrows button. This function allows you to fully control and edit selected chains without disrupting workflow. Let’s say you selected your chains in the wrong direction. You can easily solve this issue with the Display All Arrows tool. When you click the Display All Arrows button Mastercam will display all the selected chain arrows. It will also give you the ability to individually select and edit each chain by simply selecting the arrow on the screen. From here, you can select the incorrect chain, reverse its direction, and move the start point to match the others. You can also use this function to remove individual chains, or use it for mass edits like reversing all chain directions and removing all chains. Now let’s look at the enhancements in Solid Chaining. Mastercam offers a lot of new features and functionality in Solid Chaining. Let’s start with the improvement in Loop Selection. Loop now allows you to define which side of the shared edge you want by simply moving the cursor to highlight [...]
Downloading a Post From the Mastercam Tech Exchange
This blog post will show you how to download and install a Post from the Mastercam Tech Exchange. To get started, you first need to open up an internet browser and go to My.Mastercam.com. From there, just enter your username and password to login and once you arrive at the home page, go to the Communities drop-down and select the Tech Exchange. The Tech Exchange is full of free content including things like sample files that show how to use new features in Mastercam, an ever-growing list of tool libraries from a wide variety of tool manufacturers, and a complete list of the post processors available from CNC software. SAMPLE FILES TOOL LIBRARIES POSTS To help you sort through all the content, you can utilize the Search function at the top of the page to narrow down your results. It can be helpful to first hit the Clear button before starting a new search to ensure that you have a clean start. Now you can select the category you wish to search, in this example it is Posts. Then you can select the product and version of Mastercam that you need. In this example Mill and 2021). [...]
Take Advantage of Section 179 and Save Money
Most successful businesses take advantage of legal tax incentives to help lower their operating costs. Did you know that you can immediately deduct the full purchase price of qualifying equipment and/or software? Section 179 of the IRS tax code lets businesses do just that. Much of the equipment businesses purchased to conform to COVID-19 restrictions will qualify for the Section 179 tax Deduction. Further, eligibility for the Section 179 tax deduction for 2020 is unaffected by any pandemic-related financial assistance a business may have received (e.g., PPP Loans.) In other words, if a company received a PPP loan or any other Pandemic-related assistance, they may still claim their Section 179 Deduction. 2020 Section 179 Deduction Limit for Businesses is One Million Dollars The Section 179 deduction for 2020 is one million dollars. This means U.S. companies can deduct the full price of qualified equipment purchases, up to $1,000,000, with a “total equipment purchase” limit of $2.5 million. The deduction includes both new and used qualified equipment. In addition, businesses can take advantage of 100% bonus depreciation on both new and used equipment for the entirety of 2020 Curious how much you can save with Section 179 on your own purchase? View the 2020 [...]
Nexa3D Partners with Siemens to Automate Additive Manufacturing
Siemens, the technology powerhouse in manufacturing, mobility and infrastructure automation, and digitalization, and Nexa3D, the maker of ultrafast polymer production 3D printers, today announced a collaboration designed to bring Nexa3D’s additive manufacturing production systems up to full Industry 4.0 preparedness. This partnership highlights both companies’ strong commitment to help additive manufacturing prepare for Industry 4.0 with innovative collaborations, open architecture, and predictive serviceability. Having worked side by side with automotive, aerospace, medical and industrial customers, Siemens and Nexa3D have proven the need to combine connectivity, digital twin sensing, and data acquisition to deliver 24/7, lights out predictive maintenance, process monitoring and print optimization to deliver polymer additive manufacturing solutions at scale on the factory floor. Under this collaboration, Nexa3D’s entire Quantum Laser Sintering (QLS) product line will be standardized to Siemens’ state-of-the-art factory automation and edge computing technologies. Nexa3D plans commercial delivery of its QLS-350 polymer production 3D printer powered by Siemens’ automation controls in the first quarter of 2021. “We are very pleased to join forces with Nexa3D and together unleash the power and potential of our products to create more resilient and sustainable supply chains,” said Tim Bell, Head of Additive Manufacturing, Siemens Industry, Inc. “Covid-19 underlined the incredibly rapid and [...]
Success with the New Ultimaker 2+ Connect 3D Printer
Ultimaker 2+ Connect for Education as well as Small and Medium-Sized Businesses Introducing the Ultimaker 2+ Connect 3D printer, the perfect printer for education and small businesses as the entry model to the Ultimaker ecosystem. Single Extrusion with a build volume of 223 x 220 x 205 mm (8.7 x 8.6 x 8 in) Down to 20 micron (0.001 inch) layer resolution Open filament system, compatible with glass and carbon fiber composites With efficient prototyping of simple single material applications, enterprises can increase product development speed with a quick and efficient 3D printing method. Educators can now facilitate multiple students to print with effortless operation in a low maintenance solution while improving your makerspace. Ultimaker delivers repeatable results, guaranteed ROI as well as easy-to-use software and an essentials platform that empowers educators providing them with stability and control. At home or in school, you have networking capabilities and easy touchscreen interface that make sending print jobs to the Ultimaker 2+ Connect with ease. For more information about this exciting new printer by clicking below. More info