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How Ford is Redefining Its Business to Meet a Shifting Industry

The development of autonomous vehicle technologies, coupled with a growing demand for personal transport options and decreasing interest in vehicle ownership, is radically impacting the automotive industry. Forward-thinking OEMs* like Ford are responding with a bold new strategy: redefining themselves as service-oriented mobility companies. We talk to Adi Singh, Research Scientist at Ford’s Silicon Valley-based […]

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Designing for the Unknown: How NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab Engineers a Mission on Mars

We humans have turned our faces heavenward since we can remember—no doubt at the same time as we painted animals in caves and learned to make fire. Thousands of years later, we stand at the incredible moment in our history when we’ve successfully landed a creature of our own making on another planet: the Rover. […]

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Uplevel Your Team with 4 Amazing New Fictiv Features

Fictiv is a platform built by engineers, for engineers. So every feature we build—from our quick-turn CNC service to our knowledge-rich Hardware Guide—is the product of listening to our customers and learning about the tools they need to work as effectively as the products they build. Over the past few months, we’ve been hard at […]

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The CNC Periodic Table of Elements Poster Giveaway Contest is Back!

We received so much great feedback on our CNC Periodic Table of Elements the first time around, so we’re giving away more posters! And this time around, we’re not just giving away a few posters… we’re doling out 10 posters every day for the next 2 weeks. Enter to win a free CNC Periodic Table […]

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Manufacturing Feedback from Real Engineers: Introducing Live Annotations on the Fictiv Platform

Today, we’re excited to announce our new Live Annotation feature on the platform. This provides immediate manufacturing feedback from Fictiv engineers, giving you direct access to the best manufacturing insight. Simply upload your part, get an instant quote, and now view feature-specific feedback provided by our engineers. The annotations occur directly within the web-based 3D […]

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Ready, Set, GO! Drone Design Through Rapid Iteration

If you’ve ever been to Fictiv HQ, either to pick up parts for one of our events, or simply just to say hi and chat about hardware, you may have seen our drone prototypes. For those unfamiliar with them, these prototypes are a series of material samples in the form of mini drone bodies and […]

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How to Conduct a Failure Modes and Effects Analysis

In the product design world, it’s common to use a tool called a Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) to improve a design or process. FMEAs are commonly separated into two different categories, depending on their application: A Design FMEA (D-FMEA) is used in product design to identify possible design weaknesses and failure modes. A […]

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To Infinity and Beyond: 3D Printed Parts Made in Space

You just spent the last six months traveling to the red planet, Mars. You sit down for your first meal and you reach down to pick up your fork…but you realize you forgot it! Rather than waiting months or possibly years for the next group of people and supplies to come, you can simply upload […]

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PLA vs. ABS: Getting Value out of Low-Cost Prototyping

We’re taking a look at two lower resolution and cheaper 3D printing materials for prototyping: ABS and PLA. When will PLA suffice? When do you gain much more by going with ABS? A lot of people look at price and automatically choose to print in PLA because hey, it’s the cheapest material! But depending on […]

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Tracking New Life: Designing Prenatal Hardware

What would you say to an entrepreneur who wanted to make a product that customers could use for literally just nine months?  We’re not talking about planned obsolescence; we’re talking about a literal, physical inability to use the product. Not too smart in terms of user engagement, right? Of course, when we say “prenatal,” it […]