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Article
SPI guidelines provide injection molders and product designers with a standard way to describe the surface finish of molded plastic parts. These guidelines were defined by the Society of the Plastics Industry (SPI), a U.S.-based trade association that’s now known as the Plastics Industry Association (PIA, or PLASTICS). By providing a “common language” for surface […]
Article
Thermoplastics and thermoset plastics are classes of polymers used in injection molding, CNC machining, 3D printing, and urethane casting. Like elastomers, another class of polymer, thermoplastics and thermosets both consist of long, repeating chains of molecules. Under a microscope, the structure of a thermoplastic resembles a railroad track while a thermoset material looks like a […]
Article
As an engineer, you probably have experience opening, reviewing, creating, or editing STEP files. During my freshman year at Rose-Hulman, I sat in a class with 30 other students who all seemed to have an enormous amount of knowledge about 3D modeling. Meanwhile, I had never created nor even opened one before, so the first […]
Article
Introduction The concept of and applications for Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machining are mainstream in modern manufacturing and are used to make products in a range of sizes & varying dimensions. However, production CNC machining is volume-dependent. Mastering CNC production entails learning how to efficiently utilize a CNC machine to produce large quantities of components. […]
Article
Jigs and fixtures are frequently utilized in CNC machining to ensure precision, accuracy, and quality of CNC machined components. These are both types of engineered tooling designed to hold things in place during machining. The ability to hold things in place makes jigs and fixtures workholders for CNC machining. While both of these terms are […]
Article
Chefs create recipes. Hardware Engineers create BOMs (Bill of Materials) and SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures). The BOM is an ingredient list for building your product, and the SOP is the set of instructions on how to build it. In this article, we’ll explain how to construct an excellent ingredients list that will help you clearly […]
Article
Specialty plastics for injection molding have material and performance properties that meet the requirements of more demanding applications. These include engineering plastics and resins for medical, automotive, aerospace, electronics, and other applications. Polymer blends — mixtures of two or more polymers that form new materials with different properties — are also used to meet tougher […]
Article
The Challenge: Avoid Gate-Related Part Defects Injection molding gates are larger or smaller in order to support the direction and volume of flow into the mold cavity. If a gate is too large, molten plastic may fill the cavity unevenly and cause part defects such as weld lines and shrinkage. If a gate is too […]
Article
The advent of 3D printable transparent materials has opened doors to new possibilities with rapid prototyping for optical applications. Now, we can consider how to use and manipulate light with 3D printed parts. Light pipes, sometimes referred to as light guides or light tubes, are physical components used to purposefully redirect or transport light from […]
Article
When designing mechanical assemblies, it’s likely that they’ll require fasteners for assembly. Fasteners like screws and bolts are commonly used to secure mating components, and they usually require some type of hole for assembly. There are many types of holes to use to install fasteners such as countersunk, counterbore, tapped, tapered, spot faced, and screw […]
