Objective3D | BLOG

Today, a majority of consumer products and production parts are made from thermoplastics. Thermoplastics are typically used in manufacturing techniques like injection molding, compression molding and machining, but with the invention of 3D printing, they became available for additive extrusion and sintering processes. A new door to advanced manufacturing has opened with 3D printing materials similar to the conventional thermoplastics familiar to engineers and designers. Thermoplastics are plastic materials, or polymers, that become pliable when heated to a specific temperature and solidify upon cooling. Types of thermoplastics include acrylic, ABS, Nylon, PLA, polycarbonate (PC), polyethylene and other specialty, high performance materials. If your part requires strength, rigidity or high temperature tolerance, then thermoplastics are a great option to fabricate your production component or prototype. Using 3D printing, engineers can make parts with the most commonly used thermoplastic...

Leverage the benefits of the Smart Factory Stratasys recently announced a new program to integrate its 3D printers in production environments with the factory floor via the GrabCAD® Software Development Kit (SDK). Each SDK package includes a complete set of application programming interfaces, documentation, and code samples that enable development partners and manufacturing customers to establish two-way connectivity between Stratasys FDM® 3D printers and enterprise software applications. The program gives customers the power to integrate, manage, and support additive manufacturing for production of end-use parts. “Additive manufacturing enables almost anything to be manufactured almost anywhere quickly, and that is the kind of agility our customers need in a world of supply chain disruption” Stratasys has previously introduced support for MTConnect , an industry-standard protocol that enables customers to communicate factory data. However, while good for collecting execution data, t...