MCADCafe Editorial Archive for the ‘Interview’ CategoryRevolutionizing Physical Strength Assessment and Training: The Proteus Motion JourneyThursday, February 15th, 2024In the realm of physical fitness and rehabilitation, a transformative wave is making its presence felt, and at the forefront is Proteus Motion. We had the opportunity to converse with Paul Vizzio, the Director of Hardware Engineering at Proteus Motion, to explore how this company is redefining strength assessment and training.
CloudNC: Cloud-Based CAM Automation Yields Faster Results and Higher QualityTuesday, January 10th, 2023Cloud-based computer applications are all around us and continue to expand and influence many aspects of our personal and professional lives. Digital, or computer-based machining (CAM) is no exception. Although CAM and computer numerically controlled (CNC) technologies have been with us for several decades, cloud-based methods are relatively new, but evolving at a rapid pace. The first NC machines were built in the 1940s and 1950s, based on existing tools that were modified with servomotors that moved tools or parts to follow points fed into the system on punched tape. These early servomechanisms were rapidly augmented with analog and digital computers, creating the modern CNC machine tools that revolutionized machining, and more recently, cloud-based processes. Bantam Tools: Small CNC Machines Yield Big ResultsTuesday, October 25th, 2022MCADCafe recently interviewed Bre Pettis, CEO of Bantam Tools about several things regarding his past and current endeavors that interestingly involve additive and subtractive manufacturing. Pettis has had many personal and professional iterations during his career, but has always stayed close to design and manufacturing. Pettis is probably still best known as the co-founder and former CEO of Makerbot Industries, a 3D printer/additive manufacturing (AM) company now owned by Stratasys. He left Makerbot in 2014. In June 2017, Pettis acquired start-up Other Machine Co. — now known as Bantam Tools — from its founder and CEO, Danielle Applestone.
Bantam Tools builds reliable and precise desktop CNC machines. Since 2013, the company has been manufacturing desktop CNC machines for engineers and product designers enabling them to bring machining in-house and accelerate their rapid prototyping processes. Its CNC machines are also widely used by educators in classrooms and makerspaces. The company is on an ambitious mission to build an ecosystem of hardware and software products that will empower its users to create sustainable energy sources, fight climate change, land on Mars, prevent the next pandemic, and close the growing skills gap in U.S. manufacturing. Bantam Tools strives to keep as much of its manufacturing in-house as possible, and its machines are assembled and tested in-house in Peekskill, NY.
MCADCafe Interviews Bre Pettis, CEO Bantam ToolsSigmetrix: Mechanical Variation Management Helps Engineers Maker Better Decisions for Building Better ProductsWednesday, August 17th, 2022We recently spoke with Ed Walsh, VP of Global Sales at Sigmetrix for an update on the company and its technologies. During the interview, he spoke how the company continues to be focused on helping customer design and build better products through mechanical variation management. Sigmetrix is unique because it’s not just a software company, but also a service and training company that together provide a comprehensive solutions approach for its customers.
Sigmetrix is a company whose focus has always been on helping companies create better products through mechanical variation management. Walsh said, “We can break mechanical variation management down into two parts. Better products would mean a product that’s safer, maybe more efficient, produces less pollution, and is more accurate. For us, that’s what better products mean. Variation is something that comes in and can make those products not so good. Maybe makes the product less competitive or makes customers less happy. So, we’re trying to manage that to make better products”. “Our customers want to get the most out of their technology investments with the most efficient use of their resources. This includes things like having solutions that scale to multiple skill levels in an organization. We address this need by having our cornerstone tolerance analysis tool (CETOL 6 Sigma) that is used for advanced applications because it’s very powerful, but also a 1D tool (EZtol), that’s relatively simple to use. We are seeing an increased demand for tools that teach people geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) as they use them by incorporating training solutions in all of our tools. We feel that that education helps establish a use case, or ability to be used, by that whole spectrum of users”.
MCADCafe Interviews Ed Walsh, VP Global Sales, Sigmetrix
What Does Mechanical Variation Management Mean?Sigmetrix’s mission statement is “Better products through mechanical variation management.” We asked Walsh if he could elaborate on what that actually means. “I think the way we can best describe it is by defining what variation actually is. Variation can represent any number of things between the viscosity of a fluid or the amount of flow through a circuit, just based on the random variation of how things work in the world, for example, weather”. SPEE3D: Making Additive Manufacturing Easier Is Only the BeginningMonday, July 18th, 2022It’s 2022 and additive manufacturing (AM) companies and technologies continue to proliferate, some more successful than others. While many new companies in this space claim to be unique and innovative, truth be told, relatively few actually are. That said, when we spot something that truly is innovative we take note, and feel that SPEE3D definitely qualifies. We recently spoke with SPEE3D CEO and co-founder, Byron Kennedy, about his company and its unique AM technologies, materials, and processes. SPEE3D is an Australian-based company and a manufacturer of metal-based 3D printers. The advantage of these 3D metal printers is that they’re very fast and also transportable. This means customers can put them in trucks or ships and take them right to the front line where parts can be manufactured and immediately used.
SPEE3D printers enable affordable metal additive manufacturing processes. They make metal parts quickly, leveraging metal cold spray technology to produce industrial quality metal parts in minutes, rather than days or weeks. The process is powered by kinetic energy, rather than relying on high-power lasers and expensive gasses. Finally, the process provides metal 3D printing at costs normally associated with traditional production methods. How did SPEE3D get started? Kennedy said, “Our (he and the other co-founder and CTO, Steven Camilleri) background was in manufacturing. We previously had another company designing electric motors, sold that to a large US multinational and worked with them for near on 10 years in manufacturing. We saw 3D printing coming, but the reality is that it was just too expensive, and too slow. So when we finished up at the motor company, we wondered if we could take 3D printing into the production space and really solve this cost and speed issue. Thus, the company was born”. Cadence: A Natural Progression From EDA to CFDThursday, June 9th, 2022We recently spoke with John Chawner, Senior Group Leader at Cadence about the company’s entry into computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technologies after many years of being known for its expertise in electronic design automation (EDA). Cadence has long been a leader in electronic systems design, building upon more than 30 years of computational software expertise. The company applies its underlying Intelligent System Design strategy for creating innovative software, hardware, and IP solutions. In turn, Cadence customers are some of the world’s most innovative companies, delivering extraordinary electronic products from chips to boards to complete systems for the most dynamic market applications including hyperscale computing, 5G communications, automotive, mobile, aerospace, consumer, industrial, and healthcare.
Generally, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is an aspect of multiphysics system analysis that simulates the behavior of fluids and their thermodynamic properties using numerical models. Cadence’s CFD suite includes application areas such as propulsion, aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, and combustion. What makes CFD platforms especially pivotal is their ability to adapt to specific instances of additional physical phenomena. Cadence’s primary CFD products include: Fidelity CFD Solution – Provides a streamlined CFD workflow for design, multidisciplinary analysis, and optimization in a single environment. The Cadence Fidelity CFD software is a scalable Cadence CFD solution that provides technology beyond the Omnis end-to-end CFD workflow and Pointwise legacy meshing. For over a decade, the CFD industry has recognized that progress in three vital areas has plateaued: numerical algorithms, modeling of turbulent and separated flow, and the exploitation of HPC assets. Fidelity CFD makes strides in all three; the two most unique aspects are its high-order solver and the first steps toward integrating the Omnis and Pointwise meshing technologies into a single, unique platform while also advancing them separately. The Fidelity high-order solver can provide 10 times the accuracy of classic flow solvers, and 3 times mesh speedup using the Pointwise solution within Fidelity CFD. Fidelity Pointwise CFD Mesh Generation – Utilizes advanced mesh generation techniques as well as geometry model preparation capabilities for high fidelity characterization of fluids. It is well known that meshing is the most time-intensive part of the CFD workflow with one of the highest impacts, but is vital to ensuring high-accuracy and high-efficiency CFD simulations moving forward. Beyond meshing, however, Fidelity Pointwise can integrate into just about any CFD simulation workflow. Through its mesh export and import tools and pre-built relationships with other solvers and simulation tools, Fidelity Pointwise can enhance existing workflows. The entire team dedicated to Fidelity Pointwise is deeply connected to the greater meshing community and is involved in many aspects of the industry and influential guidelines like the CFD 2030 plan. Addifab: Pushing the Boundaries of Additive ManufacturingTuesday, May 3rd, 2022We recently spoke with Lasse Guldborg Staal, CEO, Addifab about his take on his company as well as the state of the additive manufacturing (AM) industry – where it is and where it’s going. Based in Denmark, Addifab is a global company built on market knowledge and high ambitions. Based on its experience, the company has developed a unique soluble mold tool enabling a process known as Freeform Injection Molding (FIM). With its innovative Print→Inject→Dissolve process, the Freeform Injection Molding technique is free of any design or material choice limitations. By printing the tool, you can create unseen designs. You can mold unseen products and business potential by injecting virtually any available material before dissolving the molding tool.
MCADCafe Interviews Lasse Guldborg Staal, CEO, Addifab “Injection molders work with plastic materials and normally use metal tools to produce parts. Metal tools are expensive and time consuming to produce. So, what we do with the 3D printing is to create injection mold tooling that is faster and cheaper, and it’s actually also greener than the conventional metal tooling. If you want to have a low cost injection molded prototype, I think the Addifab technology freeform injection molding is probably your best and most cost effective alternative.” ___________________________________________________________________________________ “At Addifab, we are committed to helping innovators capture the full potential of their ideas, and to bring their products to market faster. With Freeform Injection Molding, we deliver on this commitment; start-ups bring their ideas to market using our technology, and global industry leaders adopt our technology to boost their product development.” Lasse Staal, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder, Addifab ___________________________________________________________________________________ “What we’ve tried to do with our technology freeform injection molding is to reduce the costs and reduce lead times. We also want to provide injection molders with a new level of design freedom. And for this reason we have created injection mold tooling that is soluble because if you can dissolve your injection mold tooling, you can create geometries that are impossible to mold with any other method.” Spatial Corp.’s SDKs Help Build Innovative Engineering Software SolutionsTuesday, April 12th, 2022We recently spoke with Frédéric Jacqmin, VP Worldwide Business Development, Spatial Corp. about specific recent developments within Spatial and the industry in general. From its inception in 1986, Spatial, a Dassault Systèmes company, has developed software components – modular software packages that perform a set of specific and related functions. Software components are also known as software development toolkits (SDKs). This class of software is designed to work as a functional component of a larger application, such as CAD, CAM, CAE, and far beyond. The goal of component software is to standardize the interfaces between software components so that they can work together efficiently.
SDKs are used by almost every CAD/CAM vendor in one form or another. Popular host applications include 3D geometric modeling, data translation, visualization, metrology, toolpath generation, and simulation. In 1986, Spatial had a primary product: ACIS, the first commercially available 3D geometric modeling kernel. Over time, Spatial added other products to its portfolio that enabled independent software vendors (ISVs), primarily in the engineering software industries, for building host applications. These components include extensions and updates to the ACIS modeler, other design and visualization products, as well as acquisitions in translator technology. Sigmetrix: An Update on Mechanical Variation ManagementThursday, September 23rd, 2021We recently interviewed Ed Walsh, VP of Global Sales at Sigmetrix for an update on the company, its technologies, and the state of the industry. Like our previous discussion, during the interview, he spoke how the company continues to be focused on helping customer design and build better products through mechanical variation management. “Sigmetrix is unique because it’s not just a software company, but also a service and training company that together provide a comprehensive solutions approach for our customers,” Walsh said.
When asked for a little background on himself and Sigmetrix, Walsh said, “Over the past 20+ years in the industry I’ve witnessed a need that customers have conveyed – they want to get the most out of their technology investments with the most efficient use of their resources. This includes things like having solutions that scale to multiple skill levels in an organization. We address this need by having our cornerstone tolerance analysis tool (CETOL 6 Sigma) that is used for advanced applications because it’s very powerful, but also a 1D tool (EZtol), that’s relatively simple to use. We are seeing an increased demand for tools that teach people geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) as they use them by incorporating training solutions in all of our tools. We feel that that education helps establish a use case, or ability to be used, by that whole spectrum of users”. Reflecting on his first job, Walsh said, “I worked for a company that was an OEM to heavy equipment manufacturers, such as John Deere, Caterpillar, Case, and New Holland. Mostly John Deere, but we also built operator enclosures for the other companies. The company I worked for itself had, up until me starting there, really did more contract manufacturing and not much design work. At that time, the engineers were doing design work on giant sheets of vellum and using pencils and manual drafting tools. I was part of the first dedicated team of designers using a very early version of Pro/ENGINEER. We were given a general idea for CAD with functional requirements, but no design parameters”.
MCADCafe Interviews Ed Walsh, VP Global Sales, Sigmetrix “The great part for me was that I had the ability to go out to the pattern maker that was right next to our CAD workstations and say, ‘Hey, I want to make something like this’, and they could mock it up, and I could see how the parts were fitting together and where are they going to fit, and did it make sense from functional and manufacturing standpoints. If we needed something bigger, we could go down to the production line, but it gave me a really good idea of what actually was happening once the design concept left my CAD station. Overall, it was a really good experience for me”. Boston Micro Fabrication: Mega Results From Producing Micro PartsThursday, April 8th, 2021With new and innovative techniques for 3D printing/additive manufacturing continuing to emerge, we recently interviewed John Kawola, CEO of Boston Micro Fabrication, a unique company that specializes in (as its name implies), micro components and machines that produce them. Boston Micro Fabrication (BMF) was co-founded in 2016 by Dr. Nick Fang, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Dr. Xiaoning He, a serial entrepreneur. BMF manufactures high-precision micro 3D printers. The company’s microArch system uses a 3D printing approach called PμSL (Projection Micro Stereolithography) that leverages light, customizable optics, a high-quality movement platform, and controlled processing technology to produce accurate and precise high-resolution (2μm printing resolution and +/- 10µm tolerance) 3D prints for product development, research and industrial short run production using polymers and composite materials. Today, BMF is the only industrial 3D printing company that can match the quality of high-resolution injection molding and CNC processing. John Kawola, BMF’s CEO, should be familiar to readers of MCADCafe, as we have written about him and some of the companies he’s been associated with over the years. “I’ve actually been in additive manufacturing longer than most people, about 20 years. I was at another MIT startup called Z Corp, which was about 20 years ago. That did very well, and sold the company to 3D Systems. I spent about three years helping Ultimaker build their business in North America, but I was interested in getting back into an early-stage company and saw opportunities with BMF”.
“I wanted to get back into the early stages of an additive manufacturing company, but at the same time, I know that it’s a crowded space. There are lots of companies, and many of them are doing the same thing, whether it’s a desktop 3D printer companies or companies producing very large-scale parts. There’s also several metal companies now, too. What I was really looking for was something that was high value, and a portion of the market that had not been well served in the past. That’s really the whole theme behind our company, and so I was excited to join BMF about a year and a half ago”. |
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