Could you elevate your Approach with a Solid Plan from the Experts?

Challenge the status quo by asking yourself: Is your current additive manufacturing plan truly optimized, and how can you elevate it to new heights of success? 

Please prepare for enlightening insights as our experts share their valuable knowledge.

You'll hear from 4 expert panelists:

• Carl Douglass, CEO, DI Labs
• Brian Douglass, COO, DI Labs
• David Rosendahl, President & Co-Founder, MindFire Inc
• Kevin Carr, President, MasterGraphics

In this session, our panelists will analyze and exchange insights on:

1. How embracing Additive Manufacturing can reshape your product development approach, fostering agility and sparking creative ingenuity.
2. Why having a structured process for product development through Additive Manufacturing is not just advantageous, but essential.
3. How aligning your additive manufacturing strategies with your business goals can drive growth, boost efficiency, and amplify your competitive edge.

Whether you're a business owner, product manager, or industry professional, this webinar offers valuable insights and practical strategies for anyone seeking to enhance their additive manufacturing prowess.

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What you'll learn...

Uncover the transformative power of 3D printing in our webinar.  Learn how it drives revenue growth, revolutionizes product development, and enhances the customer experience.  Unlock the immense potential of 3D printing for growth and innovation in your business.

You'll hear from:

• David Tucker, Business Development Consultant, New Wave Manufacturing
• Carl Douglass, CEO, Di Labs
• Kevin Carr, President, MasterGraphics
• David Rosendahl, President, MindFire Inc., Moderator

In this session, our panelists break it all down and discuss:

1. What the terminology "solutionologist" means.
2. How to leverage additive manufacturing through a product development process beyond simple prototyping.
3. Where they see the largest opportunity for additive in developing new product portfolios.
4. David explains his customized innovation workshops that empower customers to maximize the potential of additive manufacturing.
5. The term, "creating a digital product portfolio", really means.

In the webinar, we addressed attendee questions on the potential and impact of additive manufacturing in manufacturing and businesses, while also exploring solutions to address customer challenges.

Watch this webinar recording now to start off on the right foot and get answers to questions you may have or may have not even thought of!

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What you’ll learn…  

In the third panel discussion of our three-part series, you’ll get answers to key questions from three additive manufacturing leaders who don’t shy away from the truth and have critical insights to share.  

You’ll hear from:  

• Kevin Carr, President, MasterGraphics
• David Tucker, Business Development Consultant, New Wave Manufacturing
• Michael Rosplock, Manager of Digital Manufacturing, Enerpac
• David Rosendahl, President, MindFire Inc., Moderator  

In this session, our panelists break it all down and discuss what is needed to leverage best-in-class 3D Print manufacturing processes with these five considerations:

1] Why it is imperative to write an effective proposal to convince the required executives and the technical team that new 3D print technology is a worthy investment. The need to justify the expenditure. 

2] The importance of designating a project lead and the value they bring to achieving effective implementation. 

3] The project leader's ability to focus on part development that leverages the additive manufacturing cell effectively. 

4] The need for understanding the proper AM cell setup and the expected production processes. 

5] The key to success also includes focusing on the factory blueprint layout that outlays the physical workflow from print to finish.

Watch this webinar recording now to start off on the right foot and get answers to questions you may have, or may have not even thought of!

What you'll learn...

In the second panel discussion of our three-part series, you'll get answers to key questions from three additive manufacturing leaders who don't shy away from the truth and have critical insights to share.  

You'll hear from:

• Kevin Carr, President, MasterGraphics
• Dennis Richards, CO, Certified Orthotist, 3D Stability
• Vince Anewenter, Director of Rapid Prototyping Consortium, Milwaukee School of Engineering
• David Rosendahl, President, MindFire Inc., Moderator

In this session, our panelists break it all down and discuss:

1) Why now IS the right time to invest in additive manufacturing and restore your supply chain (in the face of a looming recession).

2) Surefire ways to find and land profitable opportunities, assess cost-effectiveness and prove the value of AM.

3) The best ways to avoid common startup challenges and set yourself up for success.

4) How learning to design for AM will enable you to maximize your capabilities and profit.

5) Determine when/how to bring AM in-house and what to consider once you do!

Does the looming recession have you worried? Confused about the path forward for your business? Or terrified to make a costly misstep?

If so, you're not alone.  Many companies are turning to additive manufacturing as a solution—and you can, too!  But in order to optimize your success with this technology, you'll need to know where to start and what steps to take to set yourself up for success.

Watch this webinar recording now to start off on the right foot and get answers to questions you may have, or may have not even thought of!

If you’re like most businesses, you’ve got numerous questions about additive manufacturing—perhaps even a few misconceptions, too. You’re wondering: 

• Why should I be excited about adopting additive manufacturing?
• Can it really provide a competitive advantage?
• How would it help solve my customer challenges?
• What if it doesn’t work for me?

We created this webinar to answer these questions and many more.  

In the first of our three-panel discussions, you’ll hear from additive manufacturing leaders who will answer these questions and MORE—all from their own experience. How they started. What they learned. What mistakes to avoid.
You’ll hear from:

• Peter Koostra, Director of Engineering, RE3DTECH
• Kevin Carr, President, MasterGraphics
• David Rosendahl, President, MindFire Inc., Moderator

Watch the webinar recording now to gain insights into:  

• The unexpected reasons organizations are adopting additive manufacturing for a competitive advantage
• How companies start their additive journey (often through diversification), and the surprising lessons learned along the way
• Which approach to additive manufacturing doesn’t work
• Answers to questions that our webinar attendees had about expanding solutions to customers’ challenges 

Over the years, there have been many myths about 3D printing. One of these myths is that it would completely replace injection molding or CNC.  While 3D printing is capable of an incredible range of applications, it doesn't have to replace everything you're currently leveraging.  3D printing serves as a flexible and innovative supplement to your existing technology.

Are you curious about what the actual use cases for 3D printing are and how you can leverage them and get optimal results?

Here's your chance to find out!

Experts from leading 3D manufacturing companies such as MasterGraphics, Re3DTech, Graco, and Enerpac will come together to share their knowledge and secret recipes for success.

Throughout the webinar, the keynote speakers will share with you:

The benefits of introducing more 3D parts into your company mix.
How additive manufacturing can improve your supply chain.
Actual case studies on how people utilize 3D printing for TRUE Additive Manufacturing.

You'll also get a chance to meet and network with seasoned professionals.  

This question should be asked in various business initiatives.  However, I want to ask this question as it relates to additive manufacturing especially in smaller manufacturing companies that have yet to adopt additive manufacturing. 

When just beginning something—be it a journey for improvement or an initiative to ensure you are prepared, I always suggest starting small.  Companies that want to dip their toes into 3D printing have a couple of choices; own their own AM equipment or rely on service bureaus.  Times are also changing.  And those old production processes mean you could be losing your competitive edge by missing out on LARGE cost savings.  

Additive manufacturing can provide significant ROI to small manufacturers by helping:

• Improve their industrial tooling processes
• Produce more high-value, complex, low-run parts
• Create highly customized products for their industry and their customers

Start with a basic step process for additive manufacturing:

1. It starts with an organizational shift.  Generate an additive manufacturing mindset within the organization.
2. Create a roadmap.  Pilot a targeted small area and then scale up.
3. Develop a business case.  Examine impacts of parts from your supply chain and or product life cycle with the use of additive manufacturing.
4. Identify challenges and evaluate whether additive manufacturing fits in your company.

You have to get started with additive manufacturing/3D printing - doing nothing gets you nothing!

Historically most machine shops have been job shops, which makes the business dependent on constantly obtaining new customers with new machining needs.  3D printers can enable a machine shop to create its own new products and gain more independence.  

Let us review why it makes sense to adopt 3D printers in machine shops today.  

• Diversification - Metal 3D print technologies are the next evolution to the machine shop.  The ability to complement their subtractive with additive manufacturing.  The evolution of adding plastics, carbon, and now metal additive manufacturing to produce tooling, fixturing, and end-use parts.
• Optimize the tooling with metal 3D printing.  Shops can now leverage 3D printing cost-effective plastic parts or metal parts to enhance workflows and projects.  A machine shop can rely on the printer to mitigate errors and improve timelines from pre-production prototyping to creating production tools to printing end-use parts for quick fixes.
• Small-batch production — additive manufacturing technologies provide direct production options for low volume production and bridge manufacturing.  Save on tooling costs with 3D printing directly from a file, and take advantage of speed to market.

Complex geometries are the best use case for metal AM.

Most importantly, metal 3D printing

• Is especially helpful for geometries that are costly, time and labor-intensive processes to produce on a CNC machine.  Designs that leverage metal AM's freedom to generate internal features of the part, intricate geometries such as lattices, and complex forms such as topology-optimized shapes to maximize their performance while minimizing their weight and the total number of components in an assembly.  
• Communication to the machinists to help interpret drawings that have so many call-outs and can be difficult to catch all with complex geometries.  This helps eliminate time and material waste with a CNC job that a call-out may have been missed.  A 3D print can be a valuable tool prior to machined part production.
• To produce parts for test fit and function.  This will shorten the feedback loop in the machine shop with 3D prints in advance of production.  3D printing allows for faster prototypes, setting up prints to run overnight then using parts the next day.

Jigs, fixtures, and other customized production tools are essential for efficient, effective manufacturing.  Tooling is a fixed expense that must be amortized across large quantities of parts. 

• One important capability is an alternative to casting.  Machining lead times can be a hostage to the lead times from foundries delivering cast parts.  With production, metal additive manufacturing in-house, the machine shop can print its own parts as needed, without any lead-time from a supplier. 

In summary, additive manufacturing eliminates the following barriers with tolling-free production:

1. Optimized designs
2. Mass customization
3. Rapid design to production
4. Cost-effective at any scale
5. Digital inventory
6. Low operator burden

To learn more about metal additive manufacturing solutions, please connect with us directly at https://www.mastergraphics.com/desktop-metal

The official definition of Investment casting is an industrial process based on lost-wax casting, one of the oldest known metal-forming techniques.  The term "lost-wax casting" can also refer to modern investment casting processes.

Additive manufacturing technologies are rapidly evolving and their applicability to investment casting grows with it.  Instead of using injection-molded wax patterns companies can now also choose to directly 3D print patterns using Stereolithography (SLA) and MultiJet (MJP) materials.  Using these AM technologies and 3D printer software such as 3D Sprint from 3D Systems, you can streamline your time and labor-intensive process to advance production and reduce expenses.  Today this is referred to by 3D Systems as "digital foundry" which enables foundries to deliver a new level of service to their customers.  There is no need to change anything in the workflow process.  More importantly, they can expect patterns in hours rather than days or weeks.  Foundries that want to compete in this market and maintain a competitive edge should be using additive manufacturing or... be left behind.  

With the new technologies for investment casting, foundries will be able to:

1. Produce low volumes of casted parts from a CAD model in 24-48 hours
2. Reduce the costs of tooling
3. Eliminate the time it takes to produce tooling
4. Reduce costs and space for tooling storage
5. Deliver unmoldable products

Using powerful software such as 3D Sprint from 3D Systems you can apply chemical etching offsets.  Apply scale compensation for metal shrinkage.  Digitally create and position gates and vents.  Create sectioning of large parts and joints.  Prepare and optimize files for printing. 

Print your master pattern by choosing between plastic and wax master patterns.  But how do you determine which type of master pattern?  Let me summarize the differences:

With MultiJet printing (MJP) for wax casting patterns, you use 100% real wax printing technology.  This technology is great for small to medium size parts typically less than 8 inches in X, Y, and Z geometry.  These patterns are significantly lower in cost due to the material costs.  They are produced in less time than traditional patterns production again for low to medium volume prints.  You can expect accuracy and repeatability with wax patterns and fits into the existing investment casting process.  Also, ideal for customized metal components to bridge manufacturing.

With Stereolithography (SLA) for plastic casting patterns, you would use a castable resin material.  This provides you with highly accurate, high yield, large parts, and very complex lightweight master patterns.  They will maintain dimensional stability over years.  Typically, there is less manual finishing and labor expense with SLA processes.   3D Systems uses a QuickCast resin that is 30% lighter weight and provides consistent strength X, Y, Z geometries.

To learn more watch, the 3D Systems YouTube video. Understanding How 3D Printed Casting Patterns Work in the Foundry