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Common Mistakes in Injection Molding Design

Injection molding design mistakes can cost you time and money. If there’s a problem with the design of your injection mold, you may need to modify or discard your tooling. And that means paying for and waiting for a replacement tool – which will delay the start of production accordingly. Plus, if there’s a problem […]

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Fictiv Adds 16 New CNC Machining Materials to Auto-Quoting Platform

SAN FRANCISCO, July 27, 2022 – Fictiv, the operating system for custom manufacturing, today announced the addition of 16 new quality metal and plastic computerized numerical control (CNC) machining materials to its auto-quoting platform. In addition, six other new materials are now available on Fictiv’s platform with a one-hour quote turnaround time.  With the addition […]

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Fictiv Launches Online DFM for Injection Molding to Simplify a Traditionally Slow, Complex Process 

SAN FRANCISCO, July 20, 2022 – Fictiv, the operating system for custom manufacturing, announced today a significant enhancement to its online platform that enables users to easily receive, review, and respond to injection molding design for manufacturability (DFM) feedback. To manufacture an injection molding tool, engineers traditionally endure weeks of back-and-forth cycles with manufacturers to […]

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Slip Fit Tolerances and Geometry

Have you recently assembled Ikea furniture? If so, I apologize. I send my condolences for the frustration you experienced when the holes did not line up with the pins you put in other holes or when you realized you were missing a fastener. The good news is that you did gain something from the experience […]

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Design Validation That’s Disrupting Injection Molding

Your Guide to Fictiv’s Design for Manufacturability (DFM) Process When plastic part designs reach a certain level of maturity, manufacturing methods like 3D printing and CNC machining can fall short on delivering high-caliber parts in the time (and at the cost) required. That’s why — due to its ability to quickly and cost effectively scale […]

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Engineering Culture at Fictiv

I’m Tim Chang, Fictiv’s Director of Engineering. Here at Fictiv, we believe the success of our business is grounded in the collective strength of three pillars that we refer to as our 3 P’s: People, Partners, and Platform. There’s a reason we count people first among them. Fictiv has grown and thrived because of the […]

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CNC Machining with Robotics – Outlook and Manufacturing of Cobots in CNC Machining

Collaborative robots, commonly known as cobots, are so named because they are designed to provide collaborative, safe assistance to people. The first cobot was invented in 1996 by J. Edward Colgate and Michael Pashkin – and today, cobots are growing increasingly popular in manufacturing and industrial settings, performing simple, repetitive tasks such as feeding a […]

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EDM – Electrical Discharge Machining – Choosing the Best Materials

EDM (Electrical Discharge Machining) is a rapidly growing and versatile manufacturing method for cutting parts out of stock material. In 2022, the EDM market is growing at a rapid, predictable rate of 6.9% CAGR (based on a market size of US$5.3 billion in the year 2020 and projected growth through 2027).  What is the Electrical […]

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How to Write an Engineering Requirements Document

The Product Requirements Document (PRD aka Product Requirement Document) is a familiar term to most engineers. Typically, we get the PRD from a product manager; it tells us what to build but not how to build it. But let’s face it, it’s probably better that way. Engineers hate being told how to implement an idea — that’s the fun […]

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Product Study: Cost-Effective Medical Injection Molds for Lower Volumes

The Challenge: Manufacturing Process Tradeoffs for Medical Product Development Plastic injection molding (IM) is ideal for high-volume manufacturing, but not all medical injection molders can provide tooling that is cost-effective for functional prototypes and low-volume production (LVP.) As a result, medical product designers may be forced to use another process during these stages of the […]