STAC & HP INITIATE THE NEXT INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
Today we are going to talk about additive manufacturing or 3-D printing and how it’s already changing our lives and will change them in the future.
At STAC we’ve been using these processes for many years as an important part of the design process, to validate forms and styles, to reproduce components, etc.
The rapid rise of this technology over the last few years has led to machines capable of 3-D printing production runs have appeared on the market.
Here’s how simple this double change is:
> Jump from the idea to the object.
> Move from prototypes to final, commercial products.
> Additive manufacturing
Of all the products available, we’ve come to trust the HP Jet Fusion 4200 3D printer. We’ve used it to make the first production run of our hardware and we went from the computer to finished product in just one week.
This printer has allowed us to manufacture a 100% functional plastic component in a record time and at a highly competitive cost compared to other additive manufacturing methods.
> Main characteristics
The part that we have manufactured is a new plastic supplementary shim for the height regulation components in our ACRUX FR hinge.
> Traditional process
We had initially planned to manufacture this component using Polyamide 6 injection (traditional process) which would have involved the following processes: 1. Design and manufacture of a plastic mould.
2. Injection of first test pieces.
3. Adjustment of equipment or the component based on the results of the first test pieces.
4. Injection moulding of the pieces again.
> HP JET FUSION
Using the HP Jet Fusion (Polyamide 12) the process was as follows:
1. Printing of 4 prototype pieces (30 minutes)
2. Testing the prototypes and adjusting the 3Ddesign accordingly (1 day)
3. Printing (production) of the first 1000 pieces of the finished product (1 day)
4. Product launch and commercialisation
STAC is dedicated to the design and manufacture of hardware and accessories and we have collaborated with HP to change the way we design and produce and we are leading the change in our industry as part of the next Industrial Revolution.
