Sporting a quad-extruder, liquid-cooled print head, a working volume of up to eight cubic feet, and industrial-grade quality at prosumer prices, 3DMonstr’s 3D printers occupy a unique space within the market. Ben Reytblat, 3DMonstr’s CEO and lead designer of the T-Rex 3D series is as unique as the printers he creates. The son of a…
3D Scanning & Reverse Engineering Streamline Furniture Design & Production
MU Form Furniture Design is using 3D scanning and CAD tools to quickly translate its unique artisanal furniture designs into the tooling they need for partially-automated production. Until recently, developing the tooling involved time-consuming manual processes to capture the design. Recently however, the company has streamlined the process by outsourcing its 3D model making work…
Business as Unusual: Otterbox Uses 3D Printing to Achieve 8-Week Product Cycles
The fanciful spiral slide which connects the lobby and second floor of Otterbox’s corporate headquarters is the first clue to a visitor that at the highly-successful manufacturer of cases for cell phones and tablets does things differently. The Ft. Collins, CO based company’s “business as unusual” philosophy is also evident in its obsession with product…
Designers Can Help Accelerate Re-Shoring
It only took a quick tour of the show floor of MD&M West conference to find signs that the nascent on-shoring/re-shoring movement is alive and continuing to gain momentum. During visits with companies like BalSeal, D&M Plastics, and FISO I got to see firsthand how the U.S.- and Canadian-based manufacturers are starting to bring back…
An On-Line Course on Supply Chain Automation from University4Industry
A recently-released course, titled “Industry 4.0 Case Study: Digitization of the Supply Chain” describes how POSITAL, a specialist supplier of motion and position sensors, developed an advanced manufacturing and order fulfilment system. The course explores how the fulfillment system makes use of advanced technologies such as universal connectivity, cloud-based knowledge access and the use of…