29 Mar Convergence of Design and Manufacturing
Manufacturers face intense pressure in today’s world. The main goal is to get their products to the market faster. These are not your everyday products but are products that need to be appealing, cost-effective, and profitable.
In short, this compels companies to continuously generate higher levels of innovation, efficiency, and productivity. Industry 4.0 is the buzzword everyone is talking about within the manufacturing industry. The keywords that come into mind when we talk about this are collaboration, customization, and flexibility.
With the onset of this hot topic, I want to describe in this article the convergence of the design and make space. CAD/CAM Integration can significantly improve the product development process.
For years, engineers and designers were taught that complexity equals cost and time equals cost. If you think about subtractive machining, stamping, mold tool and die, or other more common means of production, you can argue that complexity equals money. Subtractive processes get rid of material which increases the value to manufacture. It is the inverse when it comes to additive manufacturing because the addition of every gram of material increases the cost to manufacture.
Designers who are unaware of manufacturing methods might not be ready to understand features that are costly or maybe even impossible to machine. CAD products with built-in manufacturing intelligence, many believe, can prevent the hiccups that tend to occur within the transition from design to manufacturing. Autodesk’s Fusion 360 provides a complete solution to this with its CAD-CAM integration capabilities.
A beginner machinist will not be ready to distinguish the areas that need precision and delicacy from people who are often liberally hacked away, thus creating a toolpath strategy that takes much longer. In CAM, the longer the machine runtime, the higher the cost. Therefore, one of the goals should be to supply the model within the shortest time possible.
The integrated CAD-CAM software lets design engineers program robots to perform CNC machining. This is a huge advantage as the designer can design products already thinking of how to manufacture.