The material extrusion nozzle and heating tube appeared to have sprung a leak during the previous ownership.  There is quite a large amount of material now extremely hard and carbonized (plasticizers all cooked out).  Left unchecked, the material would continue leaking eventually rendering the head unusable and unrepairable.

Without knowing how the print head is constructed, the only option was to disassemble the entire head.  We were able to put the partially disassembled head back into the machine to heat the nozzles back up (seen in the picture above).  The material was slowly and carefully pulled away from the nozzle while soft.  Once the material was pulled from the heat tube, it solidified into a rock-hard substance within a minute.

We pulled out the heating tube causing the problem, removed the foil and fiberglass over-wrap.  Most of the leaked material residue came off with the foil exposing a clean heat tube and heating element.  It wasn’t until now that we identified the source of the problem.

In the picture above, notice the inlet buffer (tanish brown plastic looking disk) is broken leaving a small piece left in the center of the heating tube.  Also, note the material residue on the face of the inlet buffer.  The material had been leaking between the fractured inlet buffer.  This was most likely caused by a clogged extrusion nozzle in combination with a stress fracture in the inlet buffer from the heating and cooling cycle.

How do we fix this?  First, let’s call Stratasys and see if they have a replacement ….

PRINT HEAD, FDM2000, WATERWORKS ABSi …………………… $5000

Ouch!  Now, we’re totally dedicated to getting this machine functional as we have a decent bit of money already into its purchase price.  However, if we invest another $5k, we’re probably better off buying their new machine for $15k.  Now it could be suggested that this is Stratasys’ planned obsolescence.  Maybe, maybe not.  The head is so complicated and designed for low production (expensive to manufacture parts) that it actually does cost that much to rebuild every part in quantities of less than say 5 at a time.  You’ll get a glimpse of this in a second.

Now what?

The part we need is very simple and something we could make in about an hour or less with the right equipment.  Pull out the calipers and let’s get this done…

Done.

Only one question… What type of plastic can hold the tolerances we need (+/- 0.001″) throughout the temperature range of the heating tube (room temperature to 290 degrees C) ?  Phenolic? No.  ABS?  Not a chance.  Engineering plastics ?  Absolutely now which one?

Cut to the chase… Polyimide is typically sold in very thin sheets or adhesive tape for insulating electrical circuits but is also solid in bars at about $71 per inch.  We can’t just chuck up just one inch in the lathe and what if we need another one?  Wow… the hits keep coming.  We found a surplus 5″ bar for about $150 and got it done …

One minor improvement was made where the small boss meets the large disk.  We added a radius to reduce the stress caused from the coefficient of thermal expansion differences between aluminum and Polyimide.  A chamfer had to be added to the heat tube to clear the new radius.

Heating tube reinstalled into print head (on right).

Because the head was taken apart, the tip offset between the model and support tips must be adjusted.

Back in action…

After replacing the clogged nozzle that started all of this, the machine has worked quite well for us.  We’ve had some minor hiccups and a lot of calibrating to do but all is well now.

Here’s the new Apple iPod nano modeled to exact dimensions (as provided by Apple) and rendered in PhotoView 360.  It took under 60 minutes to model, choose material and decals, adjust the scene and render the final.

The quality and time savings in comparison to several years ago is incredible.

PART 1:

PART 2:

These are 6AL4V (Titanium) lanyard rings we had machined for a consumer product.  If I remember correctly, each one took about 30 minutes to complete on a 3-axis Vertical Machining Center.  These were beautifully machined by a very talented machinist and it showed.

[Show as slideshow]

Video Notes: This part is made from 6061-T6 aluminum and turned on a slant bed CNC gang lathe.  This was done by one of our partner factories located in Shenzhen, China.  We work with them quite often and have had great success thus far.  Check out the video annotations for details …

Need something like this designed?   Even if you are in the beginning stage of your project give us a shout and we can help answer some of those questions with no obligation. Visit our contact us page and lets talk!

As any business owner will tell you, the back-end of the business is always the least enjoyed.  This includes administration tasks such as book keeping, managing client’s and lead’s contact information, invoicing, and project management.  To make all of these things less painful, we have evaluated numerous software packages and web 2.0 applications.  Here is what we’ve decide on for managing contacts, proposals, leads, and all things related to winning and keeping you as a client.  This is also known as a CRM package.

How do we keep track of your requests and information?

As a shameless plug for the service we use, I have included their banner at the top of this post.  Highrise CRM is one of the best web-based CRM packages available today.  In a nutshell, it allows us to keep client information, proposed, new, and ongoing business, and email chains.  We BCC highrise on all emails related to you or your projects so we can easily access key decisions and see conversation history.  When they receive a BCC’d email, their software will determine which client we sent it to based on the “to” address and attach it to their portfolio.  We can even break it down into projects in the event we have multiple parallel projects.

Why web based?

We evaluated other complete packages such as openERP to find that they were very complicated and had a steep learning curve.  Additionally, they would need to be installed and maintained on our server.  Not only does this add additional cost to our hosting expenses, but it means that we have to spend time on something that is not our core competency.  Highrise has very affordable month-to-month packages that are less than one billable hour of our time.  I spent well over 8 hours just installing and trying to learn openERP only to give up and look for something easier.  If you just consider the expense of switching from a standard web-hosting package to a virtual private server (VPS) required to host openERP is nearly the cost of Highrise CRM, then it becomes a no-brainer.

How does this benefit our clients?

This first and foremost reason is keeping our overhead down.  By keeping our overhead costs down, we can also keep your development costs down.  In the long run, these savings will allow us to maximize your funding to include additional features or even an entire additional project.

What’s next?

We have three other web applications that we’ve decided to start using for similar reasons.  These help us with project management, book keeping, and invoicing.  I will cover these in three separate posts very soon!

Let us add you to our Highrise CRM software and make you a customer today by visiting our Contact Us page!

So as you may have noticed it has been quite a while since my last blog post.  I have been so busy with the business end of things that I have not had time to update the blog.  In the near-future you’ll see a new website layout that better explains what it is we do here.  Additionally, there are some exciting projects to add to the portfolio section.  From here out, I will be writing much shorter articles with a higher frequency.

Hope everyone had a fun, exciting, and safe 4th of July!!

Energy harvesting is the process of capturing and storing ambient energy.  This energy can be in the form of radio waves, heat, vibration, wind, solar and  many others.  We are especially interested in harvesting techniques that can be leveraged for use in an embedded or small device environment.  Below we’ve identified some ideas worthy of further investigation and monitoring for improvements.

Piezoelectric

Here is a company that specializes in Piezo energy harvesting.  They use large piezoelectric elements with lever arms that vibrate at a specific, narrow band of frequencies to generate power.  Their units are relatively large for their power outputs and they must be used within certain narrow band frequencies.  However, this may be a good solution if your requirements fit within those constraints.

Solar

Just about everyone is familiar with solar technology using the standard monocrystaline silicon wafer (blue/green metalic look).  The problem with these is that usually they’re quite large for an embedded application.  Additionally they have very low output voltages making them tough to economically integrate into a design.  A company by the name of Clare (an IXYS Company) has taken a similar technology and repackaged it  in the form of an IC (integrated circuit) that can be directly soldered to a printed circuit board.  They’ve used new technology called silicon-on-insulator (SOI) to fabricate a tiny, yet high voltage solar cell.   We can take an array of these in parallel and build a very small device that is either solar assited or completely solar powered.  These ICs cost around $0.60 in quantities over 500.  In the world of energy harvesting, this is pocket change.

http://www.clare.com/Products/SolarCell.htm

Electroactive Polymer (Artificial Muscle)

EAP (electroactive polymers) material is quite neat.  They will change shape when a voltage (typically very high >1KV) is applied to them.  Depending on how the material is layered they can bend, contract, or turn into crazy shapes.  One of the technologies that falls under EAPs is dielectric elastomers.  These can also be used to generate power by flexing, bending, or streching the material.  There are thousands of applications for this type of energy harvesting.  One interesting one was the concept of sewing this material into a shirt.  The deflection of the material from normal human movement would generate a small amount of power.  Check out the link and video below:

http://www.artificialmuscle.com/applications/power_generation.html

We apologize for any inconvienence.  As always, if you have any questions or needs, just call!

Thanks,

Team Incredible Solutions!

The ARC Advisory Group predicts  “The market for wireless devices and equipment in process manufacturing will grow to over $1.1B in 2012, a growth rate of 32% per year…”  They go on to explain the reason for this large growth is due to large reductions on installation cost.   As an engineering company, we see many semiconductor manufacturers coming out with new wireless chips and modules.  There are two large paradigm shifts in how wireless devices are being designed that we’ve noticed in the last 5-7 years.  The first is one-chip radio solutions where only a single chip (IC) is required to provide wireless functionality.  The second is called a System-on-a-Chip or SoC and refers to a one-chip radio and microcontroller solution.  This allows the system designer to not only add wireless functionality to their device, but integrate it into the existing “brain” or microcontroller that was already in their  system.  Essentially, they’re consolidating what used to be many chips into a single one.  This integration lowers the cost to develop, certify (regulatory compliance) and manufacture a device.

Here is a device that has USB 2.0, a UHF radio transceiver, a Microcontroller, AES Encryption all on a single chip the size of your fingernail!!  Imagine the possibilities!

These new SoCs also have several other interesting benefits.  The two most notable are that of size reduction and power consumption.  By integrating the wireless and processing “blocks” into a single chip and sometimes even the same die, the chip manufacturers are able to drastically reduce the chips footprint.  The SoCs are also able to share some functionality thereby saving power.  Furthermore, advances in semiconductor manufacturing technologies have allowed the chips to be manufactured using a newer semiconductor process.  This new process helps the chips to run at higher speeds while consuming less power.

So why is all this important to you as our client?  These new advances allow for many product ideas that may’ve previously been impossible now very possible.  The new wireless boom isn’t limited to industrial uses.  There are already entrepreneurs putting these devices to use in the most obscure of places.  Some of the ideas we’ve heard include winery humidity monitoring, soil moisture monitoring, personal sensor networks, road, bridge, and building monitoring.

Come up with an idea and give us a call!  We can help you find the best solution to ensure your product is sucessfull!

A quick search on Google will yield results that show just HOW popular the snuggie is.  According to multiple sources (through Google), they’ve sold over 4Million snuggies!!  This translates into over $80M in gross sales.  How?

Marketing 101:

EASY to purchase:  Check out their website ww.getsnuggie.com (NOT affiliated) and what is the first thing you notice?  Their landing page is ALL that they need!  You don’t have to dig for the price as it couldn’t get any bigger on their site.  They have a video which explains how it works and you can purchase right on that same page, ingenious marketing!!

NEED: Using their video, they’ve conveyed the problem and the solution to something you may’ve not even been aware of.   They created a need.  You don’t have to instantly convert but guess what?  The next time you use a regular blanket I bet you’ll at least think of the snuggie.  If you ask nearly any female who actually uses blankets with regularity, they will agree then it IS a pain to have to snake your arms out of a regular blanket.

VALUE:  In the beginning of the video they imply you can keep your thermostat low to save money while using the snuggie.  This helps the consumer justify the purchase.  In their mind they compare the $19.95 price to the cost of raising their thermostat a few degrees.

FEELING: Did you notice the video on their website uses a monotone filter for the first portion of the video where they show a distraught blanket user?  They then switch to normal full-color video with vibrant snuggie colors and pleasant music (somewhat).  If you didn’t, go look again.  This gives you feelings regarding the old blanket vs the snuggie.

I didn’t cover all aspects of their marketing but you get the point without the boredom.  Pretty neat huh?  It doesn’t take much of a product just a great team.  We are that team and while we may not be the marketing and promotion experts, we can help you get in contact with the right people.  If you are successful, we are successful!

Want some more pain?  Maybe you’ve seen the Bumpits?  If not, check out their website… http://www.bumpits.com/ and look for another post about them soon!!