RapidMade Helps Firms Complete Year-End Project in Days, Not Months...

Every holiday season, purchasing agents and design engineers everywhere feel pressure to complete capital projects before they can celebrate the New Year.  Who wants to forfeit hard-earned budget allocations because time constraints prevent delivery before the 2018 count down?  Make your holidays happy instead.

Thanks to Additive Manufacturing (3D printing), year-end projects can be completed in days, not months.  Services include:

• Rapid Prototyping
• 3D Scanning
• Production Parts
• Thermoformed Products
• Reverse Engineering 
• Industrial Patterns
• Printed and Machined Tooling
• Custom Displays, Exhibits and Promotions
• Engineering Design

Additive Manufacturing benefits:

• Short lead times
• No tooling costs
• High customization
• Small-batch production
• Eliminated design limitations
• Pre-built assemblies
• Reduced structural weight

RapidMade Expands Services Offered

3D Printing, Manufacturing and Engineering

RapidMade's services now include:

Product Design and Engineering

• Simple static part design to fully automated mechanical and electrical equipment
• Design for prototyping and manufacture
• In-house prototyping capabilities for faster iterations and overnight customer feedback
• 2D and 3D drawings, tolerance and other manufacturing specifications, technology transfer and patent application documentation, equipment manuals, FDA and other compliance as well as other specialized engineering work

Rapid Prototyping

• 3D printing, quick-turn machining, traditional metal and plastic forming, short-run castings
• Thermoset and thermoplastic manufacturing, hard and soft metals, composites available
• Full-color concept models, functional prototypes, assembly and embedded electronics
• Quotes generally in under 24 hours, parts in days

Contract Manufacturing

• Production quantities ranging from one to tens of thousands
• A multitude of available manufacturing processes 
• Expertise in selecting the right manufacturing process for you
• Personalized attention to detail and top quality customer service
• Tooling and part library for easy re-orders

3D Scanning and Reverse Engineering

• Extremely high accuracy 3D digitization of parts as a reproducible STL file
• Available reverse engineering to create fully defined parametric files and 2D dimensioned drawings
• Inspection of manufactured goods to identify deviation from the original design
• Full-color scans also available

Industrial Pattern and Toolmaking

• Highly accurate tools in days, not months - at a lower cost
• Patterns and tools available for all standard manufacturing processes: Injection molding, urethane casting, sand and investment casting, sheet metal stamping, plastic forming and much more
• Additional finishing capabilities available

Displays, Exhibits and Promotions

• Full color 3D printing can be done as quickly as under 24 hours
• Print directly from renderings in CAD or BIM modeling software
• Great for architecture, store display and marketing customers
• Very fine feature detail and beautiful aesthetic quality

Finishing and Coating

• A wide range of finish options including paint, powder coat, plating, media blast, tumbling and much more
• Clear coat and dyed plastic available for cost effective finishing of prototypes and manufactured goods

Cut Lead Times & Production Costs with Rapid Vacuum & Thermoforming Tooling

Based on your lead time and production quantity, three tooling options are available:

1. Prototype 3D Printed Tooling:
   1. 24-hour turnaround possible
   2. 30-100 forms
   3. Variety of material and finish options
   4. Reduced cost and lead time compared to traditional tooling
2. Prototype CNC Foam Tooling:
   1. 1-2 week turnaround
   2. 30-100 forms
   3. Suited to larger parts
   4. Extremely accurate
   5. Significant cost and lead time savings over permanent tooling
3. Production CNA Aluma-Tek Composite Tooling:
   1. 2-4 week turnaround
   2. 100,000 forms
   3. Very steep angle undercuts
   4. Range of sizes - up to 6+ feet
   5. Extremely accurate
   6. Faster and more economical than machined aluminum

Contact RapidMade to learn more.

Stop Waiting and Paying for Expensive Tooling to Test Your Rubber Products.

Decrease R&D cycles and save money by direct 3D printing with RapidMade.

How do you prototype or fabricate small batches of rubber, urethane or other elastomers products when?

Soft elastomers won't machine.

Fabrication by sheet lamination and gluing is inaccurate, weak and ugly.

Injection molding and other casting methods can take weeks to months and require expensive tooling.

Instead, 3D print your next rubber product design. RapidMade has successfully manufactured hundreds of gaskets, connectors, covers, plugs and other rubber products for a myriad of industries.

Advantages of using RapidMade for prototype and small-batch rubber product fabrication includes:

Fast turn around - Printed rubber products delivered in as little as 2 - 3 days.

Inexpensive low volume production - 3D printing has no tooling. Order as few as one part on short notice.

Multiple material options - Our 3D printed Thermoplastic Urethane rubber comes in shore 40 and 70 A durometers and a wide range of colors. Find our more about our SLS TPE material.

Multi-material prints - Using our polyjet technology, embed gaskets and other rubber materials directly inside of a rigid plastic assembly. Mix plastics to get over 100 digital materials ranging from shore 20A to 85D hardness.

During and After Prototyping - RapidMade offers expert engineering and design services as well as competitively priced urethane casting and injection molding options for larger volume production.

Fill out our Quick Quote form to get your inquiry started today!

 

Injection Molding Made Easy

Injection molds shouldn't take months to get...

• Production Quotes in 1 - 3 Business Days. Tooling and Samples in 5 Weeks or Less.
• Design, Engineer, Prototype and Manufacture All in One Place.
• Full Expedited Production Orders in 4 Weeks or Less.
• Get the Best Price and Quality Plastic Parts With RapidMade.

RapidMade Advantages Include:

• Design and production for embedded stock and custom components including: Circuit boards, lights, mechanical components, clear windows and magnifiers, locks, springs, fasteners, and much more.
• Extensive experience prototyping and testing precise mechanical assemblies.
• In house assembly for complicated projects.
• One stop design, prototyping and manufacture limits exposure to risk between suppliers.
• Streamlined development brings your product to market faster.
• Iterative testing with customer approval every step of the way ensures you get the product you envisioned.
• Hundreds of available mold finishes and textures.
• Wide range of standard plastics options including ABS, Polycarbonate, Nylon, Polyethylene, Polypropylene and composites. Custom plastics available on request.
• Over 70 years of engineering and manufacturing experience will exceed your expectations.

Inconel Alloy 625 Now Available for 3D Printing

Inconel 625, a nickel-based alloy is said to be the first single metal alloy for 3D printing industrial applications at greater than 99 per cent density according to ExOne which creates the metal using its binder jetting technology.

Inconel 625 is commonly used for components in the aerospace, chemical and energy sectors, with applications including gas turbine blades, filtration and separation, heat exchanger and moulding processes. The metal is considered desirable thanks to its oxidation and corrosion-resistant qualities and its ability to retain its strength in extreme environments.  

The alloy, which was developed by ExMAL, ExOne's R&D arm, is scheduled to be released sometime in June.  This introduction supports ExOne's strategy of qualifying at least two new industrial materials each year.  Of particular interest, it has reportedly seen promising results in its attempts to develop a titanium-based material.

Save Thousands and Make a Splash at Tradeshows!

Monitor produced for close to half the cost of and in far less time than traditional manufacturing

Exhibiting at tradeshows, while rewarding, can be very expensive and stressful:  transporting and staging large equipment can consume a large portion of a company’s marketing budget.  But it doesn’t have to.  Using 3D printing techniques, firms can get to-scale, full-color prototypes and models of their equipment that can easily be carried and displayed on site. 

The Client:

FlatHED, Inc. is an industrial design company which specializes in designing appealing and sleek consumer goods that are also cost effective to manufacture.

The Need: 

Not all cost-effective designs for manufacture are cost-effective in small quantities for tests and tradeshows.  FlatHED designed an all-in-one computer that would house electronics that their customer wanted to show off at a trade show.  To CNC machine the design out of aluminum would have cost over $10,000 for just one unit and then they  would have been left with an unfinished, heavy part covered in tool marks.  They needed two working devices and had only $8,000 to budget for both, so they turned to RapidMade™.  

 The Solution: 

Working with FlatHED to modify the design for a special mix of manufacturing methods, RapidMade™ was able to create a finished product out of ABS plastic, ceramic, and sheet metal.  The final part was indistinguishable from the metal design and finished with high quality automotive gloss and matte finish paint, contained all the electronic components, held the weight of a heavy computer monitor, and (most importantly) cost slightly over half the original $8,000 budget. 

To-scale, full-color model shows internal components of large equipment

The Client:

Cornell Pump Company produces some of the best pumps in the business and attends over a dozen trade shows every year for food processing, mining, agriculture, and other industries that require pumping. 

The Need:

Cornell has had great success shipping and displaying their actual pumps for view at these shows, but they wanted a way to show potential customers the inner mechanics of the pumps in an attention-getting way.

 The Solution:

Cornell asked RapidMade™ to produce tabletop models of their large pumps with color coding and cutaways.  Customers can see the inner components and compare the colors with a labeled legend near the pump.  Having a tool that helps to explain the mechanics of the pumps is a valuable sales tool; it helps customers connect the dots for application.  Seeing the 3D printed colored replica also draws the attention of browsing show attendees.  On top of all of that, the ceramic model can be easily carried under the arm of a tradeshow representative, eliminating the need for expensive shipping.

Hemmerling and Ulrich's 3D Printed Chair Debuts in Milan

Design Boom recently featured the work of German Designers Marco Hemmerling and Ulrich Nether. The pair used 3D printing to create their Generico Chair which is currently on display in Milan.  Instead of simply designing an elegant piece of furniture, additive manufacturing techniques allowed them to optimize both product function and production efficiency by evaluating structural, ergonomic and manufacturing requirements:

"following an iterative design strategy, a material layout calculation resulted in reducing parts of the volume, while still enabling the necessary stiffness, comfort and functional requirements to be met. a 3D computer model was reviewed using FEM-software, to measure deformation and stresses before all the findings were integrated into a final 3D model."

Normally, projects require one to compromise on scope, time or cost yet using additive manufacturing for product development and low-volume production approach allows designers to accelerate development, improve quality, and decrease costs.  

4D Printing

Advances in 3D Additive Manufacturing technologies are far too often attributed to advances in the actual 3D printers themselves, but the machines are only 1/3 of the equation.

Often times new, innovative materials and software can have an even more profound impact on available products in the industry, or in this case, any industry.

The U.S. army just invested $855,000 in multiple projects around the development of "4D printing" software. Don't let the name fool you. The structures are created using the same 3D printing techniques on the market today, but this software allows for fundamental alterations in part design that allow the final construction to be completed after the part has been created.

By making parts out of hundreds to thousands of little, jointed components we can take advantage of new properties resulting from complicated assemblies. Additionally, we can now create objects that would have originally been too large for the relatively small beds of 3D printers.

These complicated assemblies would be far too labor intensive and costly to manufacture using any other technology available today.

Useful examples would include the dress in the video which behaves differently as we vary the size and placement of the joints throughout the dress's structure. We could also create very large objects previously compressed which snap into place to create a rigid, permanent structure much larger than the compressed one.

A lofty goal of this software would be to fabricate large objects on site in remote locations, like on an air craft carrier or on a colony in space where real estate for such equipment may be at a premium.

The beauty of Additive Manufacturing is that the users see new capabilities such as 4D Printing and come up with their own amazing applications.

Eight Common Rapid Prototyping Mistakes

The good folks at Malco Design created this fantastic white paper about the common pitfalls people experience when making rapid prototypes. The eight examples are really important to understand so that expectations and decision making can result in an optimal prototype tailored to the customer's needs. They are:

1. Poor communication/coordination between designer and prototyper - There are many variables that effect the final part strength, features and dimensions, like overall part size, process used or build orientation. It is very important that the prototyper make clear where uncertainty can occur and how to minimize it and just as important that the customer make clear the critical requirements of the prototype.

2. Overestimating users' knowledge of rapid prototyping - Many services bureaus are receptacles for uploading files and producing them in order to cut down on labor. In those instances it is incumbent upon the customer to know all the rules of rapid prototyping, may of which change over the course of months as new technologies and materials are developed. Prototypers need to keep designers informed and designers need to be vigilant to fill in their own gaps in knowledge.

3. Belief that anything can be built as a rapid prototype - There is a lot of hype in the industry that rapid prototyping can build anything and solve any design issue. Vary large parts are often not suited for the process and unless doing rapid machining, same goes for tight tolerances. Sometimes when experiences don't line up with expectations, customers are wary to use the technologies again.

4. Expecting prototypes to be perfect the first time - My favorite by far! If prototypes were always perfect, you wouldn't need them and you would instantly cut your $50,000 mold. Never forget that prototyping is an iterative process and some design flaws cannot be discovered until one tests the physical prototype in front of them.

5. Using wrong materials or processes - SLA or Polyjet photopolymers degrade in UV light over time, making them not great for production parts, SLS can have rough surface texture and feature definition, Z Prints are brittle and FDM has great variance in strength between its layers. Each of these processes has innate benefits as well. Selecting the correct material and technology is essential to getting the prototype right the first time.

6. Selecting a vendor whose capabilities don't match your needs - Some vendors are fast. Some are knowledgable. Some focus on good customer service while others focus on bargain basement pricing. Research the company with whom you plan to do business. All prototypers are differentiated to work with a specific customer niche and you should make sure you are the customer that fits their capabilities and strengths.

7. Ignoring the value of prototyping - Time is money and many companies are willing to put the extra cash down to get the product right the first time and as fast as possible. Tooling up a factory for mass production is a lengthy and expensive process. The later an error is discovered, the more costly it is and the longer it takes to solve. This could be devastating for companies trying to maintain their margins or release products when consumers actually buy them (think electronics at Christmas or pool toys in the summer.)

8. Building more than is necessary - Many times designers try to make an entire assembly without being sure that each individual component works correctly first. It can save a great deal of cost and time if the components are individually created, and then, once proven, used to build a larger, more complete device.

3D Printed Casts

The technique is antiquated and could use a little something of a shake up thanks to new technology.

Setting castings in plaster is centuries old and has a variety of uncomfortable problems. Scanning and imaging of the body are common place in the medical field in order to diagnose injuries and illnesses, but the ability to create prosthesis and custom fixtures directly from those scans is brand spanking new, from printed bones and teeth implants to entire artificial limbs. The parts either fit to the contours of your body or are exact replicas of the body part which they replace. 

This technique now produces a superior cast taken directly from a 3D scan of the broken body part and 3D prints a cast from the digital negative. The cast is designed with snap fits which enclose the arm, keeping it from moving, but making it accessible to air and hands. Much more comfortble.

Just another simple example where the medical field can benefit from applying new technologies (additive manufacturing/3D printing) to ones that are already pervasive in the medical field (3D scanning and imaging.)

Additive Manufacturing in Aerospace

A stainless steel bracket optimized for weight reduction (front) and the traditional cast bracket in the back.

Additive manufacturing (AM) has long been the holy grail of Aerospace OEMs like Boeing and Airbus. Where typically the costs of metal laser sintering can be prohibitive to mass producing parts, in the aerospace industry volumes are low enough and the design optimizations can easily pay for themselves in fuel and material savings. 

EADS Innovation Works recently released a study that says implementing additive manufacturing into planes and other aircraft could reduce material use up to 75% and fuel consumption up to 40%. 

Let's set aside the obvious environmental benefits for a moment. In an industry that is a slave to fuel costs and customers who always buy the lowest sticker price ticket off aggregator websites, airlines tend to get squeezed when it comes to making their margins.

Cutting just one pound of weight out of an aircraft can save over $10,000 in fuel costs every year. Not only do AM parts cut out that 75% of the material by only using structure where it is absolutely necessary, but light weight, high cost metals like titanium are now available where they were traditionally cost prohibitive, further lightening the load.

Machining titanium parts from billet generally causes up to 90% material waste versus virtually no waste from making the parts additively. Couple that with needing less material in the part design as a whole and scores of components that used to be made from stainless steel or aluminum can now be made from the valuable metal.

This is why we now hear engineers and executives dreaming about the development of printers that are large enough to manufacture entire wings. They see the value in a future where aircraft are created entirely from printed components. 

Maybe the additional payload provided by these technologies will eventually even eliminate the need for bag fees. Unlikely, but one can dream!

6 Axis Extrusion Printing

Be warned, for this is only a prototype, although a cool one at that. Unlike your home Makrbot, or even industrial level Fused Deposition Modelling machines made by Stratasys, this 6 Axis(!) extrusion printer prototype can extrude far more than layers. Capable of printing directly on a curved object or making multi-directional print lines, this literally adds a new dimension to extrusion printing.

There are two typical weaknesses of extrusion based printing that a 6 axis printer fixes. First is that between layer lines, the strength of an object can be up to 75% weaker than along the planes of the layers. 

Additionally, machines require disolvable support material to make complicated geometries with undercuts, a technology on which Stratasys machines have an exclusive patent. The 6 Axis machine creates these geometries without violating patent law.

Cheers to novel ideas. 

Bentley Uses 3D Printing to Design Vehicles

Bentley makes to scale models in hours instead of weeks to validate designs and increase time to market.  

“We can simulate what a car is actually going to look like and show our bosses absolute reality.”

 – Kevin Baker, Design Model Manager.

This  helps speed up the approval process and make sure the concept of the design is perfect before investing too much time and money in working on flawed individual components.

Check out the video below and remember that you don't have to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment to get the same models and prototypes that Bentley makes in house if you contact RapidMade!

A Great Infographic Breakdown of the 3D Printing Market

Everybody loves infographics, almost as much as they love 3D printing. Combine the two and you get a pretty concise look at some important metrics in our field, like what technologies and service bureaus people use, the make-up of professionals in the field, and why people use 3D Printing.