November 2010 Big Boys Toys at the TT
>>> Scroll down for YouTube clip >>>
Having made the annual pilgrimage to the Isle of Man TT races for the last 8 years, our Sales Manager Mark, onboard his Triumph Daytona 955i was looking to savour the experience at this year’s festival. The solution was easy - ‘on bike VIDEO!’ That then posed a problem, how do you attach a video camera to your bike. Luckily, being surrounded by 3D printing, Rapid Prototyping and Direct Digital Manufacturing systems, the answer was staring him in the face.
He soon set about creating a 3D CAD model of a camera bracket to mount the camera directly to the fuel tank. All looked good, the ABS-M30 part fitted perfectly. Unfortunately after initial field testing the mount was too flexible. Easy solution, tweak the CAD model to add a bit more rigidity and build the second iteration in Polycarbonate - remember no expensive tooling modes here! As you can see from the video footage, the camera mount performed brilliantly.
July 2010 Miniature Unmanned Boeing Vehicle Makes Debut Flight
Miniature but mission-ready, a Boeing-built small unmanned aircraft system takes flight in the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis as part of a test for the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory.
In reality, the Feb. 24 six-minute journey lifted off eight months earlier with a letter from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.
“They called for a white paper on an unmanned vehicle that could have a defined payload mission and be designed, manufactured and built cost efficiently in less than four weeks,” said Mike Hayes, a BR&T design engineer. “We didn’t want to just deliver a piece of paper at the end of eight months so we told them upfront we were going to give them an airplane, and we were also going to try and fly that airplane.”
(above) Boeing design engineer
Jim Greenwood launches the flight.
June 2010 When "Dog and Bone" doesn't mean "phone"...
Staff member Yvonne, in Logistics, is involved with Dogs for the Disabled, looking after the young dogs before they go on to assist somebody, and, also helping out with their fundraising. They will sometimes have a cake and tea stall set out at some function and Yvonne thought it would be a good idea to sell some dog themed cookies.
Yvonne LOGISTICS
Produced on a Designjet 3D these cookie cutters are ‘just the biscuit’ Of course we could have used a Fortus and made them in PC-iso or ABS-M30i so that they were compliant with ISO 10993-1 which is the food industry standard
Download the files and build some for yourselves. If you have some good recipe ideas for these, please let us know.
Download the Bone Cutter .stl file> CLICK HERE Download the Dog Cutter .stl file > CLICK HERE
Problem: Some of our equipment needs to be shutdown properly before the mains is removed. If there are an array of plugs, users, or cleaners can easily pull the wrong one.
Solution: Although we could use a simple stick on label, these curl and fall off and do not stand out. We drew out a simple plug cover which would show that it is ‘special’. Made on one of our 3D printers this proved to be a great solution which we now supply to customers who may want them.
Initially we made these in red to stand out then we realised that the ABS would mark really well with one of our YAG laser markers. Building them in white improves the mark contrast.
Download the file to build a plug cover for yourselves > CLICK HERE
Vapour smoothing takes the hard work out of finishing, quickly providing models that are suitable for painting or as patterns for secondary processes such as vacuum casting. The process also increases the strength of small features and seals the parts so they can be used for containing fluids.
Before Vapour Smoothing
Vapour Smoothed Gear
The process works by immersing the part in a cloud of vapour, produced by heating a suitable solvent under carefully controlled conditions. The solvent condenses on the part dissolving the surface. The part is then moved to a freeboard area where the solvent evaporates leaving a smooth sealed surface. The system is completely self-contained so there are no environmental issues.
This re-crystallised surface can then be burnished by blasting with cracked walnut shell producing a finish that would have taken many hours to produce using traditional methods.
