Rapid Prototype Blog

Archive for March, 2011

Mold making may be the procedure of generating molds for forming metals, plastics, rubber, glass or ceramics. Mold making is an invaluable skill for metal casters as it’s so very important to the casting process. Not only are molds used in metal casting but in other casting types as nicely. The very first utilizes of mold that come to thoughts are those of a more artistic nature for use of ornaments and comparable items.
The profit potential in mold making is very great, as a single mold can sell for as significantly as ,000 for the small item and over 0,000 for the large item, for example a sailboat. Latex mold making compound expenses around for the pint, and you can find it at most any craft or design railroad shop. It’s mostly utilized to make rock texture molds for design railroads. He’s now sharing his knowledge of rubber mold making inside a series of instructional videos. 
Phone trusted businesses today to discover out which substance is greatest for your mold making or casting application. The mold is cast in white clay and fired to create the saggars. The tool and mold business offers various possibilities for that efficient use of laser processes. Laser deposit welding has established itself as a high high quality and efficient restore method developing, punching or die casting resources. 
Learn mold making and casting, and choose among tens of thousands of products you can make, or produce your personal unique items. Be aware that silicone RTV mold making rubber may soak right into a porous area and lock in location. This really is frequently the case when making a mold from a wood pattern. Mold making , welding, and the fundamentals of life . 
Early in the plan students understand the fundamentals and concept of machining, device, die and mold making. Later the instructional plan emphasizes each the building of production resources and also the operation of automated gear. ProtoCAM offers RTV mold making for short-run production. There are many RTV casting materials, making Room Temperature Vulcanization (RTV) molding perfect when your manufacturing substance is likely to be a plastic injection molded resin. The 2nd section is definitely an area that I phone the My Heap online book and is separated into sections that deal with a specific region of mold making and casting. 
Roll the mixture around in the mold making certain all of the tiny or unusual places are filled.

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By 3 D lasers scanning services we mean undertaking the process of changing physical objects into precise digital models which will enable us to quickly and accurately find out the object’s shape and geometrical images. 3D laser scanning shows us the complete digital image and representation of the part or the object that we have planned to be used for reverse engineering, quality control and inspection or in other conditions while manufacturing a product. The entry of 3 D laser scanning services is quite recent in the industrial, technical, engineering and other processes. There are no hard and fast rules for its use because it is useful in most cases and the data obtained by can greatly benefit us.

One benefit of 3 D laser scanning is that size of the object to be scanned does not matter at all. There is no hard and fast rule about the size of the object which we will use for scanning. The size may range from boats, cars, aircraft, buildings, turbine blades, dental implants and mechanical parts. 3 D laser scanning has the ability to scan and provide you the best quality and highly accurate digital model irrespective of the size of the object. 3 D laser scanning systems today have become very sophisticated and are capable of scanning miniature figurines from a mere 4mm in height to a huge jumbo jet – all with incredible accuracy and resolution.

3 D laser scanning has entered into use in the industrial set up for about 10 years or so. Since then it has revolutionized the micro meteorology market especially in the aerospace and aerodynamic, automobile industry and is now also be adopted by other industries as well. Laser scanners accurately capture parts of various shape, size and material in a fraction of the time required for touch-probe measurement, resulting in increased inspection productivity. 3D laser scanning has also the capacity of acquiring hundreds of thousands or millions of points spread across the entire geometrical figure of the scanned material and thus makes it possible to accurately describe the freeform surfaces and also digitize the entire components that may lie inside the object.

The digital capability of recent scanner generations allows scanned surfaces to be displayed on screen in real-time, and dynamically adapt sensor performance according to varying surface material, color and reflectivity. 3D laser scanning services suits the requirement of the person who is operating it for measuring different measurement volumes, accuracy classes. It can also be used as a handheld option for CMM and other robotic configurations.

Since the introduction of 3D printers in the market, consumers keep on watching out for what’s in store for the future of these gadgets. Others want to see speed improvements as well as accuracy and surface finish improvements. There are those who are looking forward to increasing the size capacity and stretching out the types of materials used in a 3D printing process. From looking at these future changes, do you wonder if some of your demands have already been fulfilled by the gadget?

Well, it is notable that 3D printers have improved its future in terms of material usage and purpose. The latest printing technologies in the three-dimensional world include the printer’s capability to print on a new material which is glass. Additionally, there is a new design that is proposed to be used for the purpose of cooking and storing food.

A glimpse at the 3D printing technology process

Before moving forward, it is best to look at the usual highlights of 3D printing processes. From the digital file, the 3d image is sent to the printer. After that, the file is sliced to two-dimensional cross sections that will be cut out after the printing process. The cut-out materials will be layered and glued together to form a three-dimensional object that is solid in nature.

Latest 3D printer material – glass

Three-dimensional printers are known to print on materials ranging from powdered metal to paper to polymers. All these are capable of withstanding the 3D printing processes mentioned above. But now, after a long wait, the service is proud to include glass in the list of materials to be printed on. Wonder how this one works?

With the fusion of architecture, art and technology, this 3d process is made possible. It undergoes testing before architects decide on designs that are adaptable depending on the needs of the end user. 3D printing in glass is said to be an ecological endeavor in that old glasses may be utilized in the process. The old glass serves as the new glass’s powder.

Latest 3D printer design – for food cooking and storage

Besides the glass material innovation for 3D printers, three-dimensional printing designers are currently creating a new product that can store and cook food. This one is called as the Cornucopia, a specialized design that can actually make full meals. The Cornucopia undergoes all the cooking process essentials – from refrigeration and storage of ingredients to measuring and mixing.

Unlike the 3D printing in glass material, this design is still a mere concept. There are still a lot of ideas that should be blended in the design. For one, the proponents should think of how effective the print head can be in fulfilling its task. Of course, easy maintenance and cleaning of the product should also be regarded. Above all, the price of the 3D printer should not be more expensive than all the gadgets that will be eliminated once the device will start to do its tasks inside your kitchen.

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While explaining the term Electronic design Automation (EDA), many individuals wrongly think it is concerned with electronic component manufacturing automation that covers things like PLC programming and computer controlled of conveyor belt. Actually, the two are quite distinct in nature.  

EDA domain is only in software. It is about the use of software to help integrated circuit (IC) designers to design ICs. Software of this kind is referred to as EDA tools.

While the advanced stage of the IC design needs several creativeness, but the low level and information part of IC design can be quite repetitive, tedious. The EDA tools facilitate the designers in doing the tasks that are tedious and repetitive tasks.

In college, students of electronics learn fundamental electronic system design with the help of small number of components called gates. Basic system can be made with less than 10 gates. By their final year, the learner will know how to make larger system which consists of up to hundreds of gates. This is not how it is prepared in the actual world.

In the actual world, a system such as the Intel Pentium 4 chip is made from 14 million gates. And with the modern trend, it will not be long before we get ahead of the one billion gates (in one chip) mark. This is so much distinct from what is thought in college. Hence, in the actual world, IC is designed using several methods.

On the very complex, a system can be described using unique languages, called hardware description language (HDL). Two mostly renowned HDLs are Verilog and VHDL. Verilog is used extensively by designers in North America, and VHDL is commonly by the European designers.

Rather than designing a system on gates level, using these languages a system is described at a complex level. After that, a software is used to decode this sophisticated description into gates level. This process is known as synthesis, and the software is mentioned as a synthesis tool. One line in HDL can be decoded by the synthesis tool into few gates. Synthesis tool is one of the models of EDA tool.

Using several EDA tools, for instance, synthesis tools, rule checkers and verification tools, today designers have been equipped to make a chip which has multi million gates in it. Excluding synthesis, there are also other EDA tools that help designers with additional process of an IC design like layout tools and timing verification tools.

The trend is to start a high abstraction using a more language, which is more abstract than the HDLs like C or C++ programming languages and allow the software to do more and more task in creating the gates. Permitting the use of C or C++ in designing a hardware system is done with the objective that it will adapt some of the software engineers become hardware designers.

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The world is currently advancing towards the future, along with its cultures and technologies. Man has insatiable necessity for all things. The more he discovers, the more he desires. From the early counting sticks and stones, to the advanced microcomputers, man braces up for what’s ahead of him.

One of the advancements in the computer industry is the revolutionary three-dimensional laser scanner, or simply 3D scanner. A 3D scanner is a device that analyzes a real-world object or environment in order to gather digital data from its shape or form, and perhaps its appearance, that is its color. The collated data can be used to construct three dimensional digital models useful for a wide range of purposes.

These modern devices are used widely by the filmmaking industry for production of movies, and the video games industry for developing new games. Other common uses of this technology include industrial design, prosthetics, reverse engineering and material prototyping, product quality control/inspection, and archiving of artifacts and relics.

Different technologies can be used to build these devices for 3D laser scanning services. Each technology comes up with its own advantages, drawbacks and costs. It should be always kept in mind that many limitations in the kind of objects that can be digitized to create electronic representations in three dimensions are still present. For instance, optical technologies come across many difficulties with shiny, highly-reflective or transparent materials.

However, there are unique solutions in 3D laser scanning services for digitizing highly-reflective objects, such as by covering them with a thin layer of white powder that will help more light photons to reflect back to the 3D scanner. Laser scanners can emit trillions of light photons toward a material and only receive a small fraction of those photons back through the optics that they utilize.

The material reflectivity of an object is passed upon the color of the object, or the terrestrial albedo. The basic rule that 3D laser scanning services follow is that a white surface will reflect light photons, while a black surface tends to absorb most of the light particles and reflect only a small amount. Transparent materials such as glass will only refract the light, thus giving a false representation of digital matter three dimensions.

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Winding Up A Company

In these hard economic times business is very hard. If you are a company director looking for a bit of advice because your Plastics business is struggling, you have come to the right place. I have created many articles which try to help a director take the right steps in either closing or liquidating a business or pre-packing a sale and starting again.

Firstly if your Plastics company is insolvent you have a duty as a director to close the company and not incur any further debt, unless you can be pretty sure that you can put in place a rescue plan to turn that business around. If you can’t them you need to liquidate the company yourself or take professional advice on how best to close the business in an orderly fashion.

By far the most popular choice is to engage an insolvency practitioner to call a meeting of creditors on your behalf, prepare the statement of affairs, hold the meeting and then deal with all the procedural aspects of liquidation necessary to make sure all creditors now what is going on and how they can participate in any dividend. This is called a CVL or creditors voluntary liquidation.

There is a fee for all this and generally it will be about £5000 whoever you use around the country. There are some advertisements for liquidations at less than this but by the time all costs are accounted for, it will still come in at about the same sum.

These costs can come out of the assets of the Plastics company and indeed many businesses do have just enough assets or cash to take this final step. For many businesses, the central core of what the business does is still profitable and so often directors will want to continue to trade. This is easily possible and a sale of assets can be arranged to a new company and a lease re-assigned by a landlord, which often leaves the new company trading on in the same line of work from the same premises.

The method has a number of key distinctions: Unlike traditional, linear models of rapid prototype product development, it’s a cyclical process where one cycle inputs into the next and where a variety of solutions move repeatedly through a range of stages. It integrates rapid prototype and multidisciplinary teams to allow numerous, and nearly simultaneous, iterations.

Inspired, in part, by approaches and techniques commonly employed in food industry test kitchens, this method requires a devoted team, incorporating all appropriate disciplines and allowing a broad range of process options for comparison and contrast as to efficacy, scaling and suitability.

This method typically postpones confirmation of a concept until several iterative cycles have been conducted, to preserve flexibility and to allow incorporation of new ideas into a synthesized set of solutions. Traditional approaches frequently focus early on a preferred outcome rather than permitting the open consideration of alternatives.

In rapid prototype, numerous potential processes may be evaluated and ranked for strengths and weaknesses. Experimental work and iterative prototype testing determines the right combination of conditions for each potential stage or step in the process. By combining unit processes that are most promising, a new process train can be defined, installed and tested, incorporating the best attributes and practices of the variations considered. And, of course, as with tasting in a “test kitchen,” the product is sampled, analyzed and tested without delay.

Why outsource development?
Companies outsource work for many reasons, often expecting to reduce costs and time to completion or to resolve resource availability issues. Sometimes the reason is safety, secrecy or anticipated production problems.

Many companies presume that cost is the easiest factor to assess and, consequently, they allow the purchasing department to evaluate the decision to “make or buy” developmental services. Unfortunately, many purchasing executives lack the information for an in-depth analysis and understanding of all relevant costs and risks. For example, in comparing the “price” quoted by an independent facility to an internal “budget,” a purchasing executive may ignore critical risk factors or competition for internal resources simply because that information is not presented to him.

Some companies have saved millions of dollars by employing outsourced facilities to take the risks in scale-up, notable among them, firms in the pharmaceutical industry. There are several examples in our database where the world’s foremost experts in a particularly narrow field of chemistry learned to their horror that the impossible does occur.

In one memorable case, a client company assured us that its fluorinated product was entirely stable and couldn’t damage our all-glass, high-vacuum distillation system. The glassware was replaced. Had this work been performed in the client’s facility, the notoriety and delays in incident investigation and equipment replacement might have had disastrous consequences for other products and work scheduled in their facility.

“There are so many constraints for companies — some initially unforeseen — in new product development,” says Mike Keenan, a retired senior chemist from Exxon who has worked and consulted on a number of projects at Pressure Chemical. “Since many companies are committed to existing technologies, it’s difficult for them to have the equipment, capital and, sometimes, the mindset to develop new products and processes efficiently. And companies vary in their strengths. Some are superb at taking someone else’s process and making it more efficient and effective. Others are better at discovering a new process from scratch. In any event, outsourcing certain stages of the product development process can bolster total development efforts,” according to Keenan.

“You need to develop new products outside of the typical constraints of manufacturing, preferably where you can brainstorm for ideas with operators, chemists, mechanics, engineers and regulatory specialists,” Keenan added. “You need to be in a place where change is anticipated and facilitated, not where change requires sign-off at several levels and can take weeks or months.”

Changing equipment and process procedures are germane to the development process. “Unanticipated issues arise during scale-up; it’s common to change equipment and conditions midway through the development process, even during the course of a reaction” said Brandon Ritchie, a senior project manager at Pressure Chemical. “It’s much easier to change something in a well equipped pilot plant than in a client’s production facility. Safety, flexibility and speed are everything in process development,” he added. Pressure Chemical’s project leaders are given full authority to accept client initiated changes in equipment and operating conditions so long as the change conforms to defined safety requirements.

For example, a new client project required some dramatic modifications to the distillation of a high melting monomer. The attempted distillation resulted in a lot of freezing in the process piping. The problem was solved by injecting an appropriate solvent into the overhead to deliver the product as a solution. “We had the ability to modify the equipment quickly and to develop a new, highly successful process for the distillation,” Ritchie said, adding that this preserved the delivery schedule for the product.

Regulatory issues
Large rapid prototype Shenzhen companies are well aware of the impact of federal, state and local regulatory issues in product and process development. Smaller companies, especially ones that do not manufacture novel chemical products, may be totally unaware of the regulations affecting new chemicals. An independent pilot facility that specializes in innovative materials maintains an awareness and working knowledge of the rules, limitations and regulations impacting its customers’ development efforts. For those without the internal regulatory capability, an early consultation with an independent pilot facility should at least identify regulatory issues.

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Three-dimensional models are used for many different purposes and projects by movie studios, advertisers and video game manufacturers. If you would like to use a 3-D car model, there are four ways to get one. You can purchase one from a retailer in 3-D models like Dosch or Marlin 3-D, download one from the free section of a site like Renderosity, hire a 3-D modeler to make you a custom 3-D car free 3d models, or you can use a 3-D modeling program to make your own. There are several programs that you can use for this purpose, varying in price and features. But most can be used to carry out a process called box modeling.

Step by step.

Download an image of the car that you want to model. Then open Hexagon. Go to the “Scene Properties” on the right and add the car image to one of the grids as a reference.
Select the “Primitives” tab and click on the “Cube.” Draw it in the view and select the forward facing polygon.
Select the “Extrude” tool and extrude the face forward to form the front of the car. Repeat this step with the other faces to form the back and top of the car. Use the “Tessellation” tools to divide the model, giving more polygons that you can then move to refine the shape of the car free 3d models.
Add “Cylinder” primitives and use the “Boolean” function to subtract then from the model to create the tire wells. Then add more cylinders to act as the tires.
Use the “Materials/Shading Domain” function on the left to add colors to the parts. Save your work as a Wavefront OBJ.

Google SketchUp

Load the image that you want to use as a reference onto your computer. Open Google SketchUp.
Select the “Line” from the toolbar and draw the outer shape of the car on the ground. Now use the “Push/Pull” tool to raise the shape to about the height of the car door, using the image as a reference.
Use the “Line” tool to dived the shape into sections for the front, middle and back of the car. Use the “Push/Pull” tool to raise the center section to make the top of the car.
Select lines and adjust them to refine the shape of the car. Use the line tools to add more lines to refine the shape, as well as to create tire wells. Use the “Elliptical” tool with the “Push/Pull” tool to make tires.
Select the “Paint Bucket” tool and use it to fill each section with the color you want. Export the file as a Wavefront OBJ.

Wings 3D

Load the image of the car you want to make onto your computer. Open Wings 3D.
Click on the “Cube” to add one. Select the forward face. Right-click and from the options choose “Extrude.” Extrude the face to make the front of the car. Continue this process to make the rest of the car.
Use the “Inset” functions to create windows, doors and other sections. Then use the “Move” tool to select edges or points and move them to refine the shape of the car based on the reference image (free 3d models).
Save your work as a Wavefront OBJ.

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FactoryStudio was built entirely in .NET framework, using 100% managed code for improved operational stability, Windows Presentation Foundation for more powerful graphics and data display, and a validation system that identifies potential errors prior to deployment.

Tatsoft shows companies how to improve current operator interfaces, and create additional value to projects while lowering production costs.   Companies with a current project in the design phase, or want to see how they can improve a current solution, turn to Tatsoft to build a prototype for the system in FactoryStudio.

For Machine Builders, a specific set of features is highly desired:

“           Remote support access and remote engineering maintenance.

“           Easy Internationalization, create once and run in any language.

“           Powerful and easy to customize User Interface and graphics.

“           Reliable interface with PLC and control systems.

“           Low cost for runtime distribution and lower recurrent costs.

“           Complete functionality, without problems of integrating accessory tools.

  FactoryStudio support is comprehensive and has exclusive additional features:

“           Built-in management to support multiple application and product versions.

“           Easy creation of executable files (.exe) for large-scale delivery that do not require software protection dongles, hardkeys or softkeys.

“           Quick prototyping and services from applications team.

Tatsoft is a leading developer of software tools, products and cloud engineering services for intelligent business-user interfaces, industrial automation, and real-time dashboards. Tatsoft’s FactoryStudio provides a development and runtime environment for Process Information Management applications, including traditional SCADA and HMI applications, as well as advanced historian, optimization, and dashboard functionality.

 It is the first and only software in its category to provide both delivery and engineering collaboration on the cloud as well as through on-premises platforms. Tatsoft’s cloud solution offers the ability for multiple users to collaborate on the same project simultaneously, regardless of their locations. Processes can be coordinated regardless of the physical location of the assets involved.  

FactoryStudio has been designed from the ground up to provide engineers with reliable, scalable, secure and efficient capabilities to design, test, build, reconfigure and monitor physical systems. Applications can be developed, tested and implemented faster, with complete creative control for the engineering team and timely information delivery to all levels of the organization.

FactoryStudio represents the third generation of HMI/SCADA software built by Tatsoft’s development leads. Previous generations of software built by the team are in place in some of the world’s leading producers of automated equipment, manufacturers, utilities, and other users of automated systems.

TatSoft

www.tatsoft.com

Marcos Taccolini

CEO

marcos.taccolini@tatsoft.com

877 737 0707

Choreography by Svea Schneider Dancers: Katrin Blantar, Irene Deros, Kristina Martinez, Wooyon Park, Svea Schneider

Have you ever seen a wireframe with simulated data? Justinmind Prototyper allows the creation of much more than simple, static wireframes. You can have fully functional prototypes, with events and action as astonishing as search, behaviour changes and commenting systems.

It’s not just drawing a form. You can fill in data, and even create a login screen.

You can use widgets to create common web elements such as data inputs, buttons and such. But using datamasters, you can link these inputs to a table, where all the data is stored. So, if you want to import real information from a .csv file or type inside the program, don’t worry. Besides, changes done in the files can be exported to any other editor. Things you can simulate quite easily and you couldn’t with just a simple mockup:

filling a form searching for a product filtering data, such as bank account movements pagination of content such as posts, items in a store, etc Personalization of objects (showing things only to logged users, calling the user by his name, etc). And many other uses.

Tutorial: Creating a comment form wireframe using real data

Edit a social network’s profile just as if it was coded

What kind of changes can the users make in a prototype?

Insert data. Users can fill fields and submit this data to the datamaster, that acts like a database. For example, a sign up form can be filled and stored in your datamaster and then exported.

Modify data. Users can change a previously filled field (changing a password, for example, or editing a comment).

Delete data. Erase unwanted information with a command, just as if you were manipulating your database. All of these data manipulation commands are easy and can be configured via drag and drop.

What kind of data I can’t still use in Justinmind Prototyper

Of course, being a prototyping tool, you can’t have all the functionalities of a real website. Yet. For the moment, datamasters and datagrids only handle text and numbers. You can’t create a database of images, but you can still simulate by placing dummy images on your datagrid. Normal data, such as text areas and text lines, numbers, dates, emails, urls, percentages and money can be used normally.

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