Mold Making with Formlabs 3D Printers
This post will explore 3D printing for mold making using Formlabs 3D printers. Mold making with desktop 3D printing allows engineers to expand their prototyping toolkit. It opens up a world of production materials, offering the ability to make short-run batches and to test designs before larger-scale production. Three types of molding strategies can be applied with Formlabs. These include injection molding, thermoforming, and casting elastomers. The Form 3 can print inexpensive injection molds to validate and improve designs before metal tooling. They can be printed at both 100 microns for speed or 50 microns for high detail and smoothness. In this example, the newer High Temp resin was used to print an enclosure for a USB device. High temp resin eliminates the thermal shock or deformation found with lower temp materials. The beauty of this example is that the team was able to create three iterations, helping them to remove sink marks, air taps, and correct part shrinkage. Thermoforming is common for packaging, orthodontic retainers, and food-safe molds. The dies experience less pressure than injection molds, but High Temp is still the best choice. Standard resins can still be used for lower temperature plastics like vinyl. In this case study, a thin [...]
New Mastercam Chamfer Drill
A new toolpath called Mastercam Chamfer Drill has been added to Mastercam 2021. This new Chamfer Drill toolpath allows you to use a chamfer tool, spot drill, or drill to chamfer multiple size holes in a single operation. In practice, this will allow you to use a single spot drill to make the desired root chamfer on many holes in one operation. This new ability will allow you to significantly reduce the number of toolpaths needed to spot drill and chamfer your parts. To use this new tool just launch it from the 2D Toolpaths gallery. Since this is a drilling style toolpath, you can select your geometry using the same methods used in a normal drill toolpath. In this example below we chamfer drilled the holes on the top faces, to create a 5-axis operation. Note the different diameters of the features in our selection. After selecting the tool that you want to use, you need to finish setting up all your toolpath options for the desired operation. Set your chamfer parameters (.02 in this case including a slight dwell). Enable your tool axis control for the multiaxis output you need. And finally, adjust your linking parameters. Notice in the linking parameters [...]
Metrology Minute – How Do I Choose My First Scanner? – Part 1
Considering part sizes Notice that the title says first scanner. More than likely, companies who invest in non-contact inspection, scan-based reverse engineering or need to perhaps scan and 3D print objects will own multiple scanners in the course of a career. However, some scanners have the ability to swap out lenses, projectors and the like and can change a scanner’s capabilities by swapping hardware. Just like CNC machinery or 3D Printers, scanners can vary greatly regarding speed, accuracy, resolution, repeatability, part sizes (Field-of-View), price, ongoing warranty, post-sales service and support, and so on. So perhaps one of the first realizations to accept is that there isn’t a ‘One-Size-Fits-All’ scanner. This three-part Metrology Minute will go through what you should consider when choosing the best, first scanner for your company. Whether the scanner is based on laser or structured light you will want to review scanners that can handle the bulk of your scanning requirements because solving them all using a single scanning device may not be possible. As a general rule of thumb, scanners designed to scan tiny objects offer higher accuracy and resolution capabilities, whereas scanners designed to scan a plant or exterior of a building generally are far less accurate with [...]
How to Use Mastercam 2D Highspeed Dynamic Toolpath Air Regions
This article will cover using Mastercam Air Regions when cutting open geometry in the 2D Highspeed Dynamic toolpath. With multiple open sides many times programmers will try to select the inside edges of the open Geom. In this example, we will select the geometry along the two walls. This image below illustrates the preview chains utility that shows what the toolpath is calculating to be cut. With the machining region set to cut from the outside and no open-chain extensions set you can see that the cut area in the hashed red and black has been closed by a diagonal line. The blue area represents the air region for the toolpath, allowing the tool to move through this area with nothing to avoid. Stock has been defined for the part so switching the open-chain extension to stock will trim the cut area to open edges of the machining region. Where we run into issues is if the stock has not been defined for the part. For example, mirrored geometry. The stock has not been defined for the mirrored part when analyzing the toolpath the preview chains utility shows the cut area has shifted to the stock location for the first part and the [...]
Formlabs Launches New Materials
One of the most powerful advantages of stereolithography (SLA) 3D printing is the wide range of printing materials and Formlabs recently announced six new materials across the Form 3, Form 3B, and Form 2 SLA 3D printers. These new resins continue to challenge what's possible with 3D printing by further expanding use cases and design possibilities with our existing printers. Our latest resins support a wide range of industries and use cases within these industries, ranging from healthcare to manufacturing. The new material families and resins address the following segments: Engineering, Product Design, and Manufacturing: We are introducing a new family of Flexible and Elastic Resins consisting of Flexible 80A Resin, a reformulation of our current Flexible Resin, and Elastic 50A Resin. Healthcare: Our new line of BioMed Resins that includes BioMed Clear Resin and BioMed Amber Resin brings biocompatible resins to healthcare professionals across the globe. Dental: As part of our Materials Partnership Platform with BEGO, we’ve introduced a novel material for temporary restorations. We are also introducing a new resin for manufacturing custom impression trays, as well as improving our long-term clear material indicated for splints and occlusal guards. These two resins were developed at our in-house ISO 13485 facility. Flexible [...]
Using Mastercam Slot Mill to Program Undercuts
Let’s take a look at how to use Mastercam Slot Mill to program undercuts using settings in the depth cuts utility. For this example, we will use the Circle Mill toolpath. Open the Circle Mill toolpath and select the geometry. The depth cuts are going to be set as step ups from the bottom to top, using the top of the slot mill to create the undercut. You can select either the upper or lower geometry. The depth of the undercut geometry is 0.400 thousands so we will use a tool that evenly divides into that value. In this example, the thickness of the slot mill is 0.100 thousands. Set the finish passes for one pass and make certain the toolpath is set to start and return to center in the Transitions page under Finishing. Go to the Depth Cuts page and activate the utility. Set the max rough step to 0.100 thousands. Set the depth cut direction to step up and check the box for undercut to activate the strategy. Go to the Linking Parameters page. The top of stock is set to the upper edge of the undercut, the depth is set to the bottom of the cut. These settings should [...]