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Pressure testing, or leak testing, CNC machined, cast parts is a common functional test performed on parts and assemblies for the automotive, aerospace and medical industries. Read on to learn our best tips for pressure testing, including how it works, when to pressure test, pressure testing specifications and pressure testing methods. What is Pressure Testing? […]
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Software and hardware engineers alike have heard some form of this advice: “Build lots of prototypes; iterate as fast as you can.” For those of us in the hardware industry, these prototypes can cost a lot of time and money. So, while we should strive to iterate quickly, we must also get as much information […]
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In this part of our Butterball electric vehicle conversion series of articles, we’re discussing prototyping and making parts vs. buying them off the shelf — and you can learn more about the genesis of the project, its mechanical design, and electrical system in our other articles. As a digital manufacturing company, we’re very familiar with […]
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When it comes to an electric vehicle conversion, naturally, designing and installing the electrical system is an indispensable part of the process. It’s in the name, after all! In this article, we’ll discuss how we designed the new electrical system for our EV car conversion project, affectionately known as Butterball. You should also check out our […]
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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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Any professional mechanical engineer knows that Finite Element Analysis (FEA) is an essential tool used to analyze stress (deflection, FOS, and more) in a design based on different loading conditions. A huge part of conducting FEA centers around research. When you start the process, you don’t yet know what you don’t know. You need to […]
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Aesthetic design is in the eye of the beholder, but functional prototypes have a different standard—testing—and for most of us, exam day has never been something to which we look forward. However, test day doesn’t have to fill you with the fear you felt going into high school Calculus exams: By setting clear design expectations […]
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When you set out to prototype a new hardware product design, it might seem like there are an overwhelming number of features to test and develop. You want your product to be the best it can be, but the path to get there from a great idea isn’t always clear. While prototyping hardware is a difficult and […]
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The pre-production phase of the hardware product development cycle encompasses the commonly mentioned EVT (Engineering Verification Test), DVT (Design Verification Test), and PVT (Production Verification Test) segments. There’s a common misconception that each segment denotes a pre-production build on a rudimentary assembly line, however the T in each of the “(X)VT”s stands for Test, signifying […]
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Good products are developed with an iterative process (James Dyson famously made 5127 failed prototypes before he delivered a working Cyclone bagless vacuum). But while an iterative process is the most successful hardware development strategy, prototyping hardware can be expensive and time-consuming. So to get the most value out of each prototype, you need to aggressively […]
