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Oh hey — I caught your attention! Guessing it was the 5-oh-one in the title, up from the 101 you might already be familiar with (self high five for engineer David trying to be a marketer). Welcome to my article (TED talk?). Here I’m going to walk you through the flow of how to set […]

This latest funding round will fuel continued growth to meet demand for Fictiv’s quality-driven approach to on-demand manufacturing. San Francisco – February 17, 2021 – As the pace of digital transformation in manufacturing continues to accelerate, Fictiv today announced a new $35M round of funding led by 40 North Ventures to aggressively expand Fictiv’s groundbreaking […]

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. —January 25, 2021— Fictiv today announced that it has been named to the 2021 Wealthfront Career-Launching Companies List. The ninth annual list features compelling technology companies that provide young people with a strong start to their careers. Each year, Wealthfront gathers input from 19 of the industry’s premier venture capital firms to […]

“Medical device” is a broad umbrella term that covers a huge variety of apparatus and equipment, such as Band-Aids, dental floss, blood pressure cuffs, defibrillators, MRI scanners, and much, much more. It’s probably no surprise that medical device design constitutes a major segment of the field of mechanical engineering, especially in the U.S., which is […]

The flexibility in adjusting plastic mechanical properties makes much of our technological advancement possible, from being able to produce fuel-efficient jumbo jets with high strength, to lightweight carbon fiber-reinforced plastic that can be made into impact-resistant silicone phone cases that save our precious phones from shattering into pieces. This article provides an overview of the […]

To most people, plastics might seem all the same, but to an engineer, plastics come in families, have cousin materials, and have other materials that are as different as cats are from dogs. Of course, our clients expect us to worry about these details, and as nerds, the minute differences between materials are a source […]

Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing (GD&T) is a language of symbols and standards designed and used by engineers and manufacturers to describe a product and facilitate communication between entities working together to produce something. By deepening your knowledge around how to create a well structured GD&T, you will improve communication with your machine shop and ensure everyone […]

We love the invention and design development process. We love seeing the concepts come together, love working through iterations of prototypes and finally (finally!) getting a design just right, fulfilling all the technical and aesthetic requirements. But do you know what’s even better? Seeing your designs in full-scale manufacture. Unfortunately, once your design is beautiful […]

Design for injection molding has clear rules: Add draft. No undercuts. Round edges. Clear parting lines. Uniform walls, not too thick. But learning about advanced plastic manufacturing is like visiting Morpheus’s dojo in The Matrix: Some rules can be bent. Others can be broken. But breaking these rules is costly. Sharp edges require additional machining […]

Heat and pressure most famously make diamonds. But they do more than that: Nearly every plastic product in your house was made with the same two forces. From the 1950s until now, injection molding has dominated consumer manufacturing, giving us everything from action figures to denture containers. Despite its incredible versatility, injection molding does have […]