Product Design

A major problem for a small company can be having enough engineering staff to get the jobs done when they come in, but not such a large engineering staff that they run out of work. We have many years of experience in solid modeling in various software, ranging from MRI image analysis, to making simple assembly videos, and modeling medical implants or robots.

Design for the User

Our experience in industry and with products is that the basic design process is overlooked. We follow a standard design process.

• We go over the User Needs for you customer and generate a list of user needs that we all agree to.
  • This ensures that we work on the value-added functions, and maintain the lowest cost possible.
• We convert that list of user needs into Design Inputs. 
  • This is where we convert the User needs into specifications. Whether it is an Excel or database program to automate data analysis and report generation, or a car, specifications are what we'll work to.
• Determine Design Outputs that accomplish the Design Outputs.
  • This is what we make, the drawings, designs, program layout, etc.
• Design Verification
  
  • This includes 3D printing and prototyping. We do what is necessary to ensure the design meets the Design Inputs and satisfies all User Needs.
• Transfer to Customer
  
  • We're hands off the design at this stage. However, if you need help with marketing material, producing the design, or presentations, check out our other services and products.

Manufacturing

Labeling

CNC Programming

We have years of experience with CNC machining and programming.

3D Printing

We have over 13 years of experience in 3D printing, including SLS, SLA, DLP-SLA, MLS, FDM, LOM, Wax printing, and material development.

Modeling

Solidworks

Produced by Dassault Systemes, Solidworks is a widely popular modeling software with a wide range of capabilities. We have over 10 years of experience in Solidworks modeling and can even help you write macros to automate some of your time consuming tasks.

Solidworks is also compatible with the free HSMXpress 2.5D cam add-in. Which we also have experience with and highly recommend.

Inventor

Produced by Autodesk, Inventor is positioned to grow significantly. Over the next 5 years we expect them to gain substantial market share following their acquisition of HSM Works.

We expect the market to incorporate programming data into their solid models. This benefit is significant because once the program is set up, a change in size of a feature only requires post-processing the original program. This requires the native cad model though and to have that model updated with the changes. Currently this is a bit complicated because the designer doesn't want to share the native model with all the manufacturers. Instead they send a stp file or an igs file. So even if a job shop could control their machine programs with the solid model, they can't completely benefit from making minor revision changes automatically. Nonetheless, software like MRC can highlight the differences in parts and soon more benefits will be experienced.

Fusion360

This is a new cloud based software that has limited modeling capability, but is free for small businesses. Produced by Autodesk it has low cost subscriptions and a very intuitive interface. Furthermore, since the acquisition of HSM Works, it has 2.5D CAM and multiaxis CAM solutions built in. The biggest problem we've noticed is that threads are not intuitive to model (we developed a script to solve this problem) and the file exports are limited.