TriMech Blog

From Unimate (the first robot placed on the factory floor by General Motors) to Roomba™ the robotic vacuum, there is no question that the field of robotics has drastically changed our culture over the past four decades! The industry is estimated to hit $135.4 billion in 2019, according to International Data Corporation. While robots have played an important role across various industries and even in our homes, there is a whole new category of robots, soft robotics, which could cause exponential growth over the next decade.

Within the past few decades, robotic arms have allowed the manufacturing industry to develop into the fast production entity it is today. First used in the automotive industry, robotic arms can be programmed to take on any task that calls for high repeatability and precision. Today, robotic arms are used in almost every industry imaginable: from medical, to agriculture, to electronics manufacturing- and additive manufacturing tools like 3D printing is making the technology even more accessible.

3D printing processes are easy to implement and offer a wide variety of materials to support a part’s requirements while eliminating cost, lead time and design barriers for adopting manufacturing aids on the shop floor. 3D printed composites are an exciting new trend. Whether it is chopped carbon fiber filled into a thermoplastic or continuously laid inside of a 3D print geometry, the benefits of the strength-to-weight ratio are far superior to traditional 3D printed materials. In this blog post, we’ll compare continuous fiber, chopped fiber filled nylon and Stratasys Nylon 12CF and when it’s best to use them while 3D printing parts or prototypes.

The VeroFlex and VeroFlexVivid family of materials are an unbelievably unique set of new materials available on Stratasys J Series 3D printers, which are capable of producing parts that have improved strength and flexibility while retaining great shape memory. Similar to how our simulated rubber-like Agilus material works, parts produced in either VeroFlex or VeroFlexVivid do not need to be handled as gently as other material parts and will hold up with little fear of them breaking. However, unlike Agilus, this material produces parts that are rigid and will snap right back to their original shape after being flexed in any direction. This makes them a great material to print high-quality full-color parts that are thin, like eyewear and small action figures, so today we’re going to show these new materials in action as we make some incredible Fourth of July sunglasses!

With the latest advancements in additive manufacturing, it is now possible to 3D print insulative and conductive material together, enabling the rapid on-demand production of printed circuit boards (PCBs), antennas, flexible electronics and other functional freeform electronics. In this article, Simon Fried, President of Nano Dimension USA, answers the top five frequently asked questions about this new technology. You will learn about the benefits of 3D printing electronics in-house, understand how inkjet deposition technology works, examples of how to design parts for electrical prototypes and watch examples of 3D printed parts being created using the DragonFly 2020 Pro electronics 3D printer.

June 23 is International Women in Engineering Day! This campaign was created to raise awareness about the amazing women that fulfill engineering positions in our workforce, and to ignite a spark of interest in young girls and women around the world to pursue a career in engineering. In this blog post, we are going to learn about ten women that impact the 3D printing industry everyday with their creativity and drive.

Printing amazing full-color, real to the touch textures using the Stratasys J735 or J750 printer and Agilus30 White simulated rubberlike material is truly amazing. Previously, we discussed some ways to create colored 3D texture files for printing through the use of wood and stone 2D image files. In this article, I’m going to show you some tips and tricks when creating your full-color 3D models in Adobe Photoshop to create a leather texture. Additionally, I’ll share some things to look out for when you are creating your models to avoid not-so-appealing final models, and what you can do to fix these issues.

In our previous blog post, we walked through the process of setting up an airflow study over the front of the Thunder Roadster. We used SOLIDWORKS Flow Simulation to set up a computational fluid dynamic (CFD) analysis to verify that incoming air is adhering to the surface of the car and entering the hood scoop at racing speeds. With the results verified, the next step is to design new inlet components to route as much of that air to the engine as possible to improve performance.

RAPID+TCT was last week in Detroit and there were a lot of manufacturers, large and small, showcasing their advancements in the additive world. RAPID is one of the largest additive manufacturing conferences in the US and has been running for the last 30 years. At this show, many manufacturers announce their new technologies, so it’s usually an exciting show. This was my first RAPID and I was excited to see what all the big manufacturers were showing off as well as to see some of the more emerging technologies like bioprinting. Below are some of my highlights from the show.

Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) is a 3D printing technology that uses production-grade thermoplastics to create prototypes, end-use products, replacement parts and much more. These thermoplastic materials are strong and resistant to high temperatures. If your parts will be tested through an arduous process, FDM may be the best choice. There are several ways in which FDM can help improve the flow of product development in different parts of the process.

TriMech’s solution partner, Stratasys, has recently signed an agreement with Arrow Schmidt Peterson Motorsports and Don Schumacher Racing. This agreement allows the automotive teams to leverage the Fortus and F123 series of 3D printers as part of their additive manufacturing process to stay ahead of the competition by accelerating component prototyping, proof-of-concept and finished ultralight usable components. 

In our last article, “How Do I Print Wood", we learned how to 3D print a texture in full-color using the Agilus30 White material on the Stratasys J750. We discussed how to use new SOLIDWORKS 2019 features to create physical 3D displacement models using a 2D bump mapping pattern and then apply the color texture to the model in Adobe Photoshop CC.

In this article, I’m going to show you another method to accomplish nearly the same end product, this time using a stone texture and only Adobe Photoshop CC. What’s more, we’ll go into how 3D displacement using bump maps in Photoshop works, showing you a quick and easy method to manually alter those bump maps to make smoother or coarser physical textures.