AdvancedTek Part of the Week – 3/3/16
No ears, guns or cars – just real parts and real applications.Today’s part of the week example is a gearset from a manufacturer in Minnesota. This local customer has invested in direct access to both FDM and PolyJet technologies. Direct access to both technologies allows them to select the best technology and material(s) for different engineering challenges that they encounter throughout the design and test stages of new product development.
In this particular case, the gears were intended to be as functional as possible for testing a new mechanism. The customer used their Objet30 Pro and selected PolyJet VeroClear material. VeroClear offered sharp detail of the gear teeth along with the required rigidity, which offered the best results for testing the mechanism under load. The full assembly was created out of both FDM and PolyJet printed parts in addition to their standard components (i.e. motors/encoders) for testing purposes.
At the end of the day, this customer is able to use direct access to both technologies to help create new concepts, validate designs and even move to testing product before investing in production tooling. It has become an essential part of their process for designing and validating complex mechanisms early in the development stages before large investments are made in production tooling. While this customer could easily access 3rd party service bureaus for these parts, they identified early on that direct access to the technology allowed them to be faster and more nimble with their NPD efforts. For example multiple set of these gears were produced in just a few hours and ready for testing.
Please contact us if you’d like additional information about 3D printed functional parts for testing complex mechanisms or other applications. Please consider following AdvancedTek for future samples and customer stories.
Posted by Matt Havekost, AdvancedTek Director of Sales – Additive Manufacturing