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Milling the Future with 5-Axis CNC Machines

Have you ever seen a beautiful piece of metalwork and wondered “how did they do it?” There are no seams, no signs of welding, and it appears as though it’s one piece. The surfaces are too complex to have been wrought manually, so what’s the secret? A 5-axis CNC machine. These machines have transformed the […]

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How to Select CNC Machining Tolerances When You Have Complex Requirements

Sometimes juggling all the requirements for tolerancing your part can feel like a circus act. As a design engineer, you must choose machining tolerances for fit, form, function, customer requirements, industry specifications,manufacturing capabilities, and don’t forget about making sure it can be inspected and properly defined. Whew! It’s a struggle to create parts which are […]

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The Many Types of Steel, and What You Should Know About CNC Machining Them

Steel comes in many forms: sheet metal, plates, bars and beams of various geometries, pipes, and of course, the solid stock material used when CNC machining steel. Steel is used for so many applications and by so many industries that it makes sense for there to be many different types of steel. But what’s the […]

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Choosing the Right Injection Molding Tooling Material

Oftentimes engineers and product designers place much focus on selecting the appropriate grade of plastic when developing injection molding part designs. Equally important, though frequently an afterthought, are the metal materials used to manufacture the injection molding tool itself.   There are multiple commonly used grades of metals for tooling, and they’re typically used for the […]

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SOC 2 Security Explained: How it Protects Your Design IP

Your company’s design IP is the lifeblood of your company and gives you a competitive edge, so protecting that information is a priority. Keeping critical information confidential and secure is a challenge for every organization, in part because there’s no single, professional standard for assessing cybersecurity. Not only that, information security, or infosec, is a […]

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A Brief History of CNC Machining

From workshops to large industrial plants, computer numerical control — or CNC — machines have become integral parts of the production and manufacturing industries. The history of CNC machining dates back to when it was simply referred to as numerical control. This was an older system that didn’t involve programmable computers. The history of CNC […]

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How to Perfom a Hypothesis Test, an Essential Element of Good Engineering

Statistics may not be your favorite subject from college, but it’s a critical part of an efficient product design and manufacturing process. Using statistics you can design experiments, run tests, collect real world results, and make data-driven decisions. These experiments can be used to test the effect of changing a dimension, material, or manufacturing process […]

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A Beginner’s Guide to Post-Processing for Plastic Injection Molding

Post-processing improves the properties of plastic injection molded parts so that they are ready for end-use. It includes corrective actions that remove surface defects and secondary processes for decorative or functional purposes. For example, post molding operations can remove excess material (known as flash) or apply part numbers. As its name suggests, post-processing always occurs […]

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Fictiv Launches New Auto-Generated 2D Drawings to Improve Quality in Early Stage Development

Fictiv is the first on-demand manufacturing platform to automatically generate drawings from 3D models, providing a solution for engineers that want higher quality parts, faster. SAN FRANCISCO, July 28, 2021 — Fictiv, the leader in high-quality manufacturing on-demand through its Digital Manufacturing Ecosystem, today unveiled an industry-first feature that enables engineers to create and edit 2D […]

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Introduction to On-Demand Manufacturing

The Rise of On-Demand Manufacturing It’s no surprise that the manufacturing industry felt the same pressure as other industries in a post-Amazon world. Customers expect companies to provide them with what they need when they want it, with very little tolerance for delays. The growth of ecommerce and the rapid rate of change in various […]