More people step up and admit 3D printing is over-hyped

The world has changed and many have had enough of Pay 4 Play liars like slow eddy.

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Reply to
jon_banquer
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enjoy

Reply to
F. George McDuffee

I dunno Jon, I read your Linkedin page, and I didn't see any "admissions" f rom anyone. I saw a discussion of the limitations of poorly thought out 3d prints which produce parts that can't be machined efficiently. The same cou ld easily be said about ANY poorly designed part regardless of the techniqu es involved.

That said, I spent the day yesterday at the Javits Center in NY attending t he MD&M show

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. I spoke with plenty of manufac turers who use 3D printers to generate mold patterns, proofs of concept and finished products. These are real companies producing real products.

So, perhaps 3d printing has been overhyped in your world, but it certainly has not been in the world of medical devices - the surface is only beginnin g to be scratched.

Reply to
rangerssuck

You aren't surprised about that, are you? d8-)

"Design for production" has been a mantra in production for at least

50 years. Caterpillar was a pioneer, in the early '70s, at taking their new design engineers and putting them on the shop floor for six months before they'd let them design anything. My FIL was part of that program at Cat's Aurora plant, teaching those new engineers how things are actually made. It really paid off for Caterpillar, and other large manufacturers picked up on the program. But not everyone caught on.

I took a look at the "admissions" comments Bonker's apparently is referring to in the subject line, and it's all about one small aspect of AM -- prototyping for conventional machining -- that isn't even where the action is in AM anymore. Since they're involved in machining and CAM, it's no surprise that's where their attention and interest lies, but the real interest in AM has moved on.

Tooling, like the AM plastic fixturing, clamps, and gaging tools at Volvo Trucks, is attracting a lot of interest. And scroll down to look at the colored drawing of this mold insert:

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That thing is made of maraging steel, and it cycles 40% faster than a conventionally milled or EDMed mold, because of those cooling passages. They're a snap with AM, but impossible to machine in a single piece. The company is doing a land-office business in making those molds.

The irony here is that one or two of JB's commentators are bitching that designers are 3D printing things that can't be machined (what else is new? They've been drawing things that can't be machined for eons.). But that mold cavity, and the fuel nozzles the turbine-engine manufacturers are making with AM, are made with AM specifically because they CAN'T be conventionally machined.

How many such parts will be uncovered is hard to say, but AM already is moving past that stage, at least in terms of where the incentives are driving the machine builders. The US Army, Navy and Air Force, and domestic aircraft manufacturers, are using AM right now as a way to make on-demand replacement parts for airplanes and military equipment. That market potentially is huge, extended to civilian uses beyond aircraft.

This "hype" subject came up months ago, and I pointed out at the time that there certainly is a lot of hype about 3D printing in the consumer press and in some segments of the trade press. It's possible that the hype has penetrated the design and management departments of some manufacturers. But the people who know what they're doing aren't the ones who are hyping it (except in press releases). They're building machines that are actually making parts, in both plastic and metal, for a variety of industries. And the market is growing pretty fast overall, even if it's a little herky-jerky. If the price of full-melt metal AM systems comes down, there won't be any question about it.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

I went through that myself as a production floor assembler and then a pencil-and-paper draftsman at a maker of custom production test equipment. They had electrical and mechanical engineers but the project leader position I was working toward had to be a generalist who knew some of both plus HVAC and industrial wiring and could use tools.

The subject of the lesson was the design of structural sheetmetal to be made on a press brake and Strippit punch. I didn't have to become an expert at operating the machines, only understand the tolerances they were capable of and the necessary sequence of operations, such as punch ALL the holes and corner notches, THEN do the bending, and try to minimize the inevitable match-drilling at final assembly.

As you say, not everyone can correctly imagine how the three dimensional part will be made, and that includes some very smart electrical engineers. A Physics professor I knew socially told me he had switched majors from Chemistry because he couldn't visualize molecular structures rotating and vibrating in three dimensions.

I was stuck for a while on how to accurately locate the bearing press-out holes on the wheels I'm making. My mill doesn't have enough vertical clearance to index the blanks in a chuck. I finally chucked the disks in the milling vise and located the #10 (~3/16") tapped holes as close as possible to both sides of the OD of the bearing recess by feeling the clearance of a #2 drill/countersink to the wall with paper.

So I still design features I don't know how to make, assuming I'll figure out something later and change the drawing to match.

Two opposed holes were adequate when the first bearing was initially pressed fairly hard into an 0.0004" interference fit. I could turn the cap screws 1/6th turn alternately to press it out. The final fit is close enough to turn the screws simultaneously with my fingers. The electric trolley hoist will see so little use that wear if the bearings shift isn't an issue. Mainly it will keep heavy logs away from my feet. The HF manual I-beam trolley's bearings are quite loose on their axles.

I'm trying to accustom myself to progressive (no-line, varifocal) eyeglasses I bought yesterday. They shift continuously from nearsightness correction at the top to slight magnification at the bottom, with the result that only a few lines of text on the screen are clear, though the sharp focus distance varies from 12" at the bottom to seeing the bright stars Arcturus and Spica nearly as points instead of blobs at the top. Also I can't use the larger monitors on the shelf above the laptops without tilting my head up uncomfortably or leaning back too far to type. Last night I detailed the CAD drawing of the wheel axle on the 15" laptop screen, easily, instead of on the

22" display above it that I use without glasses.

I lost my previous company-issue glasses at a volunteer construction project a few weeks ago after taking them off to start a balky generator. They were probably trampled into the dirt, run over by a skid-steer, then buried under tons of sand. Providentially I kept an older pair in the car.

-jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

I wore progressives for six years. I couldn't stand them while using the computer. Mine were supposed to be the best Variluxes made. ($880 including frames -- thank God I had multiple insurance policies! I paid $20.) Still, the narrow focus field made driving a little scary, and the up-and-down head motion took a while to get used to.

Over this past winter I had cataract operations on both eyes. At the end, the doctor said "You don't need glasses anymore." And he was right. Except for reading. He told me to get some drug-store magnifiers, which I did.

I liked progressives for one thing: shopping at the supermarket. I saved mine just for that one use.

Good luck with them. Some people have no trouble adjusting. It took me some time.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

I loved them immediately for general use but they aren't so good for the long, close work that I can do without glasses. I'll have to watch out for situations where I might take them off without having a safe place to store them, like that construction site. They aren't as bad for that as the company-issue bifocals I lost whose lower section wasn't really sharp any useful working distance. The eye doctor lacked the equipment to test near vision so I asked that they at least make the ground clear enough that I wouldn't trip, and suggested half the correction of the top.

At home I have a deep bathtub soap basket on the wall at the foot of the basement stairs to safely store eyeglasses, since I wear a headband magnifier or safety glasses with reading sections in the shop. There's a pair at each machine.

The extensive trilingual safety warnings on the bag take up so much space that they are in a tiny font I can't read without opening the bag and putting on the glasses. That's like Taylor Swift's remark about the illogic of scissors that come in a blister package you can't open without -- scissors!

-jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

================= FYI

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The Airbus A350 XWB has more 3D-printed elements than any other commercial passenger jet. The roughly 1,000 parts were created in partnership with Stratasys, the additive manufacturing company.

Stratasys reportedly used an ULTEM 9085 resin, which is certified to an Airbus material specification, to fabricate each part on an FDM 3D printer. The process melted the resin and extruded it layer by layer until entire parts were fabricated. This method produces parts that are lighter in weight and strong, as well as being flame, smoke and toxicity compliant.

Reply to
F. George McDuffee

Jon:

Rather than slamming 3d printing, how about an assist in designing/processing the parts for printing?

Most of the posters have a knowledge of cad, and can create a 3d wire form of an object. and have access to a cad program.

What hints would you care to give to the group for creating

3d surfaces from a wire frame model, particularly compound curved surfaces and inside corner radii, so these are "manifold" and can be processed through a "slicer" program to generate the FFF g-code file for 3d printing?

Do you know of any [free] VBA or AutoLISP macros or add-ons to "skin" a DXF/IGES wire frame?

Reply to
F. George McDuffee

In aerospace, AM is producing turbine engine compressor blades, and some driven turbine blades, from a chrome-cobalt superalloy. Other parts are being made from maraging steel, precipitation-hardening stainless (17-4 PH and others), and several grades of aluminum and titanium. These are 100% dense; they're not sintered parts.

If you want a quick rundown of the metals they can print, the article I linked to earlier gives the highlights. It just applies to the laser-melting process. There are some other metals that are included in the electron-beam-melting and other AM processes:

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The difficult part is applying AM to fast-quenching, heat-treatable steels and other heat-treatable metals. That's where the research is being applied now.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

LOTS of people can't think in 3D, so that doesn't surprise me at all.

Whatever works!

Isn't that the way it's always done? (see TBD dwg for reference)

To lower rolling resistance, I'm sure.

Good luck. I nearly nuked a pair I tried a decade ago, but settled for flowing plasma at both the optometrist and his assbite office manager instead. After two weeks of severe headaches and a couple near misses in the truck, I'd had it. They never told me that 80% of the lens has no correction whatsoever, so my brain was left to handle translation of my twin astigmatisms on its own. It didn't like that after several decades of help from real eyeglasses, TYVM.

Condolences. I lost a lens once, when a screw loosened; sucked.

Yes, always keep spares! That's another reason I like buying from Zenni. An extra pair (stainless framed hi-index bifocals) costs about $30, so I buy two pair at a time, keeping a pair with the brand new prescription as a spare each time. My old prescriptions are in a drawer, the new spares in the truck (now in my BOB) at all times.

Reply to
Larry Jaques

Only if the ball bearings jam from dirt, which is possible since the ones they used don't all have seals on the hidden side. They didn't waste any extra effort making those things. I'm doing a more careful job for the practice.

How is Zenni to deal with? I got a second version of the prescription for normal bifocals with reading lenses on the bottom which I think would be good for driving and better for extended close work. My eyes are too different for drugstore reading glasses to work well. I speed-read which requires a wide field of sharp vision.

-jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

(Psst! I was kidding.)

Indifferent, but that's usually not a problem. Watch your data entry. I missed seeing a wee minus sign, so my first order was unwearable. They offer 50% back if you return the order, so it's not an entire loss. But it takes a month to happen.

With your speed reading, I strongly doubt you'll adapt to the new progressive lenses, unless the page fits within the scope of the progression. I'm highly sensitive to distortions, so I couldn't deal at all. I'd sooner adapt to a bloody fisheye, I think. (Oh, no! Now Gunner and Pete will think I hate/kill/destroy progressive lenses. Hmm, maybe on this, they'd finally be right. ;)

Reply to
Larry Jaques

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