Faster Learning Beats Better Planning
The ability to make things, if only to quickly turn around and break them, is useful when advancing an idea or design. It’s common now for design teams to have a 3D printer at their disposal for mocking things up and sometimes even building useful stuff. With all the excitement about additive manufacturing, though, its easy to overlook advancements that have been made with CNC equipment. We’ve had a lot of fun lately with a our new 5-axis CNC machine from PocketNC.
It’s great for medical implant product development because it is small and stiff. There is an ER-40 collet fixture so cylindrical stock up to an inch in diameter can be mounted directly in the trunion. Use 3-axes with indexed rotation or take full advantage of the 5-axes with NX for completely integrated CAD/CAM/CAE on the desktop. Literally.
