Category: Vendor Case Studies

New Hudson Facades wanted to speed production, cut costs and increase product quality. All without incurring the high cost of hiring or training 3D printing specialists or building specially-equipped additive manufacturing facilities. With 3D Printing they are now able to produce clamping fixtures used in the assembly process for holding custom aluminum extrusions manufactured for NHF’s glazing systems. Previously they machined fixtures at $200 per part because they found it was difficult for their CNC machines to grab the extrusions. They needed a more accurate means to match the shape of the work holding to the extrusions. And, since they typically produce 100-200 unique and temporary aluminum profiles per project, the custom tooling needed to be low cost and easy to produce.

Quick Takeaways

3D Printing enabled:

• 15% increase in production speed
• 5X reduction in inspection time
• $200K savings per year on fixture costs
• Improved production accuracy
• 50% reduction on assembly inspection times

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Rize’s minimal post-processing enables CONMED to deliver functional parts, including molds, for end-use products, in one day, with ink marking for part identification. 3D printing is used for researching ideas and iterating designs for nearly every product developed at CONMED. Traditional machined prototypes can take days or weeks vs. overnight delivery for a 3D printed part. This time savings realized by using 3D printing is significant considering the number of iterations per project and the number of active projects at any given time.

Quick takeaway:

3D Printing can

• Cut part turnaround in half
• Provide superior surface quality and low-surface-energy enabling the customer to produce end-use silicon products
• Diversion of jobs from other manufacturing tools, optimizing each.

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