3D printing is a very interesting form of manufacturing technology that is already beginning to blow away the doors of traditional manufacturing and machining in some situations. The intricate products and prototypes that are being developed through 3D printing can hold a wide variety of details, colors, textures, and features. In a nutshell, this technology can create some pretty cool stuff!
Currently, 3D printing is used by a wide variety of individuals and companies. Some small businesses have a few desktop 3D printers lying around in the office to create prototypes. Some larger corporations have miniature factories that can produce a wide variety of models. Many hobbyist designers have their own “home” 3D printer. These home printers can cost anywhere from $800 – $4,000. From these printers, hobbyists are creating a variety of products, typically from ABS plastic. Printers are available for anyone to buy if capital isn’t an issue, but unfortunately it is. Not everyone can simply spend around $1,000 on a machine for hobby purposes. Where there is an issue there, the private companies all over the world are jumping on it! If money can be made off of a service, there will also be competition. Let me jump into the service companies that offer 3D printing.
Various companies like Kraftwurx, Shapeways, Sculpteo, I.Materialise, and Ponoko are offering 3D printing to the masses at an international level. Why spend thousands of dollars on a machine when you can let someone else do that? These companies allow for users to submit their designs to be manufactured through 3D printing. Most orders range from $50 – $150 at these companies, and you get 100% unique 3D printed products. Most of these companies host a store of user submitted models that you can have manufactured.
Submitting your own models for manufacturing is an entirely custom engine; the models have to be designed by you, and they will be manufactured for you. These companies are promoting the technology known as 3D printing, and they are making it easy to get YOUR work manufactured. However, let’s say that you’re interesting in your own custom products – but don’t know much about design. You could always hire up a designer to work for you, but that definitely isn’t free. Most novice designers work at $15 – $20 an hour. Definitely not free. Is there any cost effective solution to providing truly unique designs to consumers who lack design skills?
Fortunately, there is some progress. Shapeways offers a couple softwares that allow for the customization of various ceramics. Shapeways even worked with to Industry Structure Analysis Ppt allow for your own custom songs to be printed on ipod cases. Pretty interesting huh? There isn’t too much outside of Shapeways offering true customization.
Actually, there is software being developed right now. Kraftwurx will be launching a truly custom engine that allows for the adjustment of various products by users who don’t have any design experience. Placing images, text, Light Industrial Jobs and curves on shapes will …
Tag: custom
How to Prepare When Choosing a Custom Home Builder
So, you’ve made the decision to build a custom home. Now comes the next step: Finding yourself a builder. You might be tempted to go with the first custom home builder you come across just because you’re in a hurry to get to the next step, but don’t! Taking some time to research properly will pay off in the end when your new home is finished with a minimal amount of problems, issues or extra costs, and you finally have the house you’ve always dreamed of.
Get your questions straight
Make a list of questions you have about how they work, what standards they adhere to, how much time they usually take on building a single house, etc., and send it to their office. Some questions will be able to be answered by email like this, but other questions you really want to meet with the builder in person in order to see how seriously they take the issue.
Make an appearance Importance Of Small Scale Industries
You definitely want to visit their office in person in order to make sure that they are a legitimate company. Ask to see their license and permit to operate in their area as well as proof of how long they have been operating there. While you’re there, ask about the warranty they provide and ask to see any materials you can of previous projects. If you can, also ask to be toured around any houses built by them, and inspect every detail first-hand.
Look to the past
Any reputable custom home builder will have a history of building homes in any period and type of economy. How has the builder’s company been doing financially for the past two or three years? Look at their activities during a recession or during a time when the economy was tough; did they still receive jobs on a consistent basis? If so, chances are better that you are dealing with a quality builder company that can be trusted.
Pay attention to Metal Business Ideas communication
How much a builder chooses to communicate with you about your future home as well as their past homes says volumes about how trustworthy they are. If the builder is happy to share stories and details of their projects, that can be a sign of confidence and past successes. If on the other hand they do not want to discuss them or seem vague or hazy when discussing yours, you might want to look around some more.
Don’t go alone
When you are making a decision of this type, you are ultimately deciding upon something that will affect you for many years down the road, if not for the rest of your life. Be sure to have someone beside you that has had experience in the past with buildilng a custom home, or knows the custom home industry well themselves. This type of know-how can make all the difference between choosing a builder that’s going to hang you up with problems and …
The Custom Nature of DVD and CD Manufacturing
In today’s society we are conditioned to think that technology makes everything easier, faster and cheaper. While examples of this can be found rather easily it does not hold true for all products and services.
One industry that suffers from the misconception of technology equating to easy and fast processes is the CD replication and DVD replication industry (not to be confused with CD duplication and DVD duplication).
As noted below, in many instances every component of a fully packaged CD or DVD is completely custom made. The only ‘off-the-shelf’ component being paper stocks and ink that are used in the printing processes. Custom manufacturing of so many components for each and every order certainly creates a burden of time and expense, which becomes a challenge in today’s market of easier, faster and cheaper expectations.
The example shown below breaks down the steps required to create what is likely to be the most popular packaged disc option in the market today: That being a CD or DVD disc packaged in a printed board-stock sleeve or wallet.
1. Glass Master and Stamper Creation
The CD replication process embeds data into the disc during the injection-molding process.
Using a specialized suite of software programs, the data from the client’s master disc is ripped, analyzed for errors, and is then transferred via an etching process onto a “glass master”. The glass master is then electroplated to create a “stamper” which, in turn, is used to embed the data into the disc in the replication process.
2. Disc Replication
The replication process begins with optical grade polycarbonate pellets which are heated and injection-molded into the finished size and shape of the disc product.
During injection-molding, the clear polycarbonate is pressed up against the stamper which embeds the data into the plastic. After the discs cool a very thin aluminum layer is added to the data-side of the plastic and is then protected with a clear lacquer coat.
3. Disc Printing
When replication of the discs is complete the graphics (also commonly referred to as the ‘label’) are printed onto the clear lacquered side of the disc.
This is typically done using either CMYK Offset Printing or Silkscreen Printing methods, which are commercial machines that require a pre-press stage involving film rip and imaging prior to the printing taking place.
4. Disc Sleeve How Do Manufacturing Companies Make Money Printing
Many of today’s eco-friendly packaging solutions are completely custom made as they consist solely of printed boardstock.
Sheet stock is printed using CMYK Digital or CMYK Offset commercial printers which require a pre-press stage and ripping of artwork files. Depending on the type of printer being used printing plates may (or may not) have to be created.
5 Die-Cutting
After the sheet stock has been printed and dries sufficiently the individual sheets are die-cut.
Die-cutting is a process where the printed sheet stock is run through a machine that (a) cut’s the individual eco-sleeves from the sheet, and (b) creates creases and fold lines as …
Nine Reasons Why You Need a Custom BIOS
Many times a minor tweak to your system BIOS can greatly enhance the industrial computer user experience. The BIOS customization can be relatively simple such as adding Industrial Engineering And Management Quora a customer’s company logo to the system start-up screen or as complex as re-ordering a system’s boot priority to match a customer’s unique system start-up requirements.
Either way, you want to ensure that the system integrator you work with understands both your system sub-component configuration needs as well as how the BIOS of the SBC or motherboard can be optimized to get the most our of your industrial computer system investment.A� What follows is a list of the nine most common BIOS customizations requested by users of industrial computers.
Change Standard Defaults – From changing processor operational parameters to device interface types, this is our most common custom BIOS request and one of the simplest to implement. The payback can be enormous in terms of simplifying the end user system deployment process.
Embed Company Logo – Another common request is to add the customer’s company logo to the BIOS start-up screen, ideal for creating a branded solution.
Increase Device Bus Capacity – For customers with a lot of I/O cards in their system, this custom BIOS change can be a lifesaver in terms of preventing unnecessary hardware expenditures.
Match Specific IRQs – Sometimes certain system components must reside in precise system locations within memory. Changing Carton Crates Manufacturing the IRQ to match the needs of the system sub-component can save hours of trouble shooting and work around headaches.
Custom Retry Logic – Sometimes a specific combination of I/O cards requires changes in the BIOS retry logic. A BIOS change like this can prevent system lock ups during data traffic bursts along the system’s I/O communication interface bus.
Adding booting delays – Legacy peripheral I/O cards sometimes have problems booting in a system with the latest multi-core processors. This custom BIOS change enables the cards to boot in the correct sequence and save the costs of re-engineering in a new card that may not meet all of the customer’s long established system requirements.
Change Reset Pulses – Adding extra reset pulses within the BIOS sometimes enables a customer to prevent having to change an I/O card model type due to system initialization issues.
Modifying Memory or I/O Resource Requests – Frankly I/O cards do weird things when requesting system memory or I/O resources. Oftentimes the requests make no sense and cause system misbehavior that can be eliminated by making a BIOS change that ignores unnecessary resource requests.
Changing Boot Priority – Some customer systems require a specific boot priority in the event that the bootable device configuration is changed. This is a simple way to meet these requirements without incurring undue re-engineering expenses.
In the world of industrial computing, BIOS modifications are quite common for users of single board computers and embedded motherboards.A� In some cases, such changes are required to ensure proper system operation, yet many users are …
How to Design a Custom Industrial Computer System
In the world of industry you are often going to find that it’s incredibly hard to design a decent computer system that can handle all of the required tasks. This is why it’s important that you evaluate exactly what the main servers are being used for, and then ask yourself how you can make them do their job better.
In a typical industry, there is database software being used at just about any given time. This being the case you’re going to want to make sure that the database can be accessed smoothly and effectively. This means that if you have a business in which fifty people need to access the database directly, you’re going to have a lot of processes on your hands. But what about workers who are using hand held scanners? Believe it or not that can also add to the complexity and the resource requirements on the database. That being the case you have potentially hundreds or even thousands of different people accessing the database on any given day. Can your servers handle that?
If the answer to that is no, then you are going to want to do a complete overhaul of your system and build yourself a custom industrial computer system. You’re going to need to go over what sort of parts you might need. First of all you are likely to require a server rack, linking them all together so that they can actually share the load. Typically each machine should have the same amount of processing power while working in harmony with every other system present. You’re going to want to make sure that you have as much RAM as humanly possible because that helps out with the multiple processes.
Make sure that you have a lot of hard drive space in this industrial computer. It needs space because there are tons of orders being sent through the system and the majority of them are being stored on the drive. Essentially you need to be sure that it can actually handle it! It is recommended that you have drives of at least one terabyte if not more.
By doing this you also ensure that the server banks will be able to run the database software that you probably have tucked away in some drawer waiting for Industrial Engineering Vs Civil Engineering the day that your server bank could actually handle it. One thing that you can rejoice in is that these machines do not need dedicated graphics cards.
Since the machine will never actually be displaying anything or if they are it won’t be anything too complex, so there’s no Latest Innovation reason to invest in a dedicated graphics card; unless, of course, you had a burning desire to play an MMO on your server.
Working in industry, you must understand that accidents happen, and for that reason you need to make sure that your computers are kept in a safe place, far away from employee related accidents or overheating. Always ensure …