In this world the musing of the humble designer is seldom talked about or even thought of. What happens between the desk and the drawing board of an engineer, stays there. Even among engineering circles, the skill as important as making drawings of a physical product won't have enough suitors to fill a small room with to talk about. And in all honesty, that is fair. Making engineering drawings, or engineering graphics, for those with taste, is frankly very boring. It's tedious work making detailed drawings of a something that doesn't exist in the world, but you have to make sure its correct to the inch, on paper. To some it is an art only given to the most honored engineers, to most, it is as boring a watching paint dry. The world has gone far away from the days of yore. No longer is the creation ground of all things engineered on paper, willed into the world by the mind of an engineer and his pencil. And with new blood, comes new innovations. The world has gone the way of...
The word 3D printing in context of mass manufacturing of mechanical or electronic parts tends to get thrown around alot lately. All the flash and bang about 3D printing being hyped as the catch all savior to industry 5.0 seems more fantasy than fact. While 3D printing is a very useful modern technique for manufactuing parts, it still fails to beat the champion parameter of everything manufactuing - Bottom Cycle Time (BTC). To explain this topic a bit better, imagine a competition between a Production line with just FMD 3D printers. And another line with the good old Plastic Injection Moulding. The former line represents the modern frontier of manufacturing technology - 3D printing. And the latter line represents the ol' reliable. We shall be comparing the advantages and disadvantages of each gen of Manufactuing tech used and try to find that sweet spot between the two. Our test part will be a 450mm quadcopter frame. A commonly used UAV frame in FPV Kamikazed applicatio...
