Tracking

Latest articles

Article

Engineering Fundamentals Refresh: Compressive Stress

🎵 Mm-noom-ba-deh Doom-boom-ba-beh Doo-boo-boom-ba-beh-beh Pressure! Pushin’ down on me, Pressin’ down on you, no man ask for Under pressure! That brings a building down 🎵 We’re back with an engineering fundamentals refresh about compressive stress (and an assist from Freddie Mercury and David Bowie).  It’s never too early to get acquainted, or too late to […]

Article

PEI Injection Molding

PEI injection molding is used to produce plastic parts that resist high temperatures and harsh environments. Polyetherimide (PEI), a high-performance engineering thermoplastic, also provides superior dielectric strength for dependable electrical insulation. Ultem® is a well-known brand of PEI from SABIC Global Technologies and comes in nearly 100 different grades, including both filled and unfilled materials. […]

Article

Solid Edge® vs. Solidworks® Comparison

Solidworks® and Solid Edge®  are premium CAD packages for product and machine design. Solidworks® is primarily parametric, whereas Solid Edge® combines parametric design with synchronous modeling and direct editing. Solid Edge® has a more flexible subscription pricing structure. Solidworks® and Solid Edge® have various pricing tiers with complex functionality like FEA (Finite Element Analysis). While […]

Article

PEEK Injection Molding

PEEK injection molding produces high-quality plastic parts from polyether ether ketone (PEEK), an engineering thermoplastic with exceptional properties that makes it suitable for applications in the medical and aerospace industries. PEEK’s excellent thermal and mechanical properties are a function of its semi-crystalline molecular structure — some PEEK molecules are highly ordered (crystalline), while others are […]

Article

Spotfacing and Spotfaced Holes

One of the challenges with rapid prototyping is making sure that everything fits together properly. If the design team isn’t careful with its high-fidelity models, parts assembly may involve the use of a hammer – and sometimes in frustration. With proper callouts, however, the secondary machining of 3D-printed and injection-molded parts gives designers a better […]

Article

10 Trends Shaping the Future of Supply Chain Management

The global supply chain is rapidly evolving, trying to keep up with the dizzying technological advancements of the modern era. Read on to learn about the latest supply chain innovations in 2023 and beyond. 1. Artificial Intelligence and Automation Artificial intelligence (AI) is more popular than ever. Our 2023 State of Manufacturing Report shows that […]

Article

Tool Balancing: Our Top 5 Tips

Balance is important when you’re CNC machining parts —  you can break things if your balance is off. Balancing tools for CNC machinery, or “tool balancing”: This article will discuss how tool balancing works, its process, the common tool balancing standards, the importance of tool balancing, and the considerations to take. Why Should You Balance […]

Article

Prototype Injection Molding: The Ultimate Guide

Is prototype injection molding an oxymoron? If you’re like most designers, you’ve learned that plastic injection molding is for high volumes of production-quality (i.e., non-prototype) parts. Maybe you’ve also heard that steel injection molds are for higher volumes, aluminum injection molds are for lower volumes, and that both types of molds are too expensive for […]

Article

Injection Molding Glossary

Injection molding is a multi-step process that injects molten plastic into a metal tool called a mold. The plastic material then cools into a solid and the part is ejected. This process is easy to understand, but part designers, mold makers, and injection molders all need to speak the same language. Fictiv’s Injection Molding Glossary […]

Article

Differences Between CNC Routers vs CNC Mills

Without access to advanced manufacturing equipment and computer programming, civilization as we know it would not exist. Would we have nice things? Sure. But would we have traveled to the moon and outer space and explored the deep depths of the ocean? Likely not at the scale we are able to today. We have CNC […]