There are many ways to produce custom plastic parts for a prototype.  In most cases the processes are used only for prototyping, as the setup-cost is low, but the piece-cost is high (the opposite of most production manufacturing processes).  This article is meant to be used as a guide to what is available to make […]

You’ve had your “lightbulb” moment.  You’ve come up with the next great product idea.  Now what?  Follow these 7 steps to see your new product idea become a reality. 1.  Determine if your idea is a good idea. It’s time to do some research and ask yourself the following questions: a)  Is there a market […]

In order to utilize Excel sheets that have macros function properly, you must ‘enable macros’ in Excel itself.  By default, in Excel, macro’s are disabled.  It is my recommendation that you select the lowest security setting for macros (ie. have them permanently enabled) so that you save time by not having to constantly turn them on when […]

The surface finish of your product components is just as important as any as any of the other design considerations.  Often, my clients aren’t aware of all of the options available to them, nor the resulting properties and benefits.  Surfacing is an industry all on its own, and there are far too many options to […]

The field of Material Science and Heat Treating is far too vast to give a comprehensive treatment on this single webpage, so instead I mean to give some basic theory and application examples that would be relevant to one of my clients endeavoring a typical product development. Heat treating primarily refers to processing of metal parts after their manufacture process (machining, casting, forging, etc) . For most metals, exposure to specific temperatures and durations, as well as cooling and heating rates, can greatly effect the microstructure and properties of the base metal. The reason we do this is primarily for increasing the strength of the material, but heat treating can also be necessary for relieving internal stresses resulting from manufacturing processes that might cause premature failure of the part.

I find that alot of my clients get confused when requesting CAD files for their various prototyping and NPD activities.  This is because they generally don’t know what they actually need, and they don’t know what the different file types actually are.  This article is meant to describe all of the ‘important’ CAD file types […]