Additive Manufacturing

AUG 2013

Modern Machine Shop and MoldMaking Technology present ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING, a quarterly supplement reporting on the use of additive processes to manufacture functional parts. More at additivemanufacturinginsight.com.

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F E AT U R E Now, the company continues to fnd new fxturing and workholding applications. "With AM, you can see a concept in CAD, and if you want to try it out, you can have a fxture in hours," McCue says. That compares with days or weeks for conventional fxture making. This 3D-printed assembly fxture is used in Premier's production line for the "Cosmonaut," a customer's touchscreen stylus product. In the Toolroom In terms of fxture production, organization tools and moldmaking, AM has taken Premier to a new level. "If we are milling plastic parts, it's great," McCue says. "If it's a curved, organic or round part that is not easy to hold, we can use 3D printing to make really great fxtures." Often, these are fxtures that would not be practical to produce any other way. Premier uses AM frequently within the custom automation side of its business. McCue says he consistently uses it to design fxtures to hold pieces of automation such as L brackets, 12— AM Supplement sensor and camera brackets. The company also aims to apply AM for some 5S concepts, creating organization tools for cleaning up the production area. "With AM, you can create a place for your crescent wrench, a place for your screwdriver, and basically strap those kinds of tools to the sides of the machines," McCue says. The shop is just beginning to explore AM for this kind of customized hand tool management within its own facility. On the moldmaking side, Premier has used 3D printing via the Stratasys machines' fused deposition modeling (FDM) process to run off prototype mold tools for a customer, printing the molds from Ultem and then creating a master unit die (MUD) set. After printing A and B halves, the company successfully ran 30-40 polyethylene parts for the customer using this tooling. Making low-volume injection molds in this way has helped the company win work from customers unable to justify $5,000 for a frst run of molded parts. In fact, the company's frst attempt at molding parts this way involved a customer that didn't know how the mold was made. Premier took the risk, ready to use conventional tooling to produce the parts if the RP mold failed. Buy-in/Training McCue says a couple of factors have helped with AM's adoption at Premier. One is Advanced Technology Systems, the representative for Stratasys and its line of 3D printers. "AM is about getting in there and doing it, and then being able to call a 'Matt' to run things by and hear explanations on what the machine

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