We all have had those moments where we were told that something is impossible; it just can not be done. Everyone in the automotive industry said that very thing when it came to airbag inflator housing. This crucial component to an airbag was always made using two pieces, and it was impossible to make it into one. But that was not the case for Tom Szabo of ITW Highland.
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Day Moore has been an avid kayaker for many years. She loves it so much that as her wedding present from her parents, she asked for a “How to Build a Kayak” guide, and that is exactly what she got. Her and her husband spent months building wooden kayaks in their small apartment. It was so small, in fact, that whenever they needed to turn the kayak around they had to carry it out the door, down the stairs to get it outside, turn it and bring it right back up.  Continue Reading →

“Connecticut-based startup LiquidPiston announced today that they have built a small, compact engine that is powerful enough to drive a go-kart. Their X-mini engine weighs just 4 pounds and has three moving parts, and yet can produce 3 horsepower, enough to replace the default 40-pound piston engine that normally powers the go-kart.”

Read more about it on Popular Mechanics.

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XMV3

LiquidPiston started in 2004, with a dream to design ultra-efficient, compact, low vibration, powerful internal combustion engines. In the spirit of Edison, LiquidPiston strove to improve their concept before moving to manufacturing, acquiring knowledge along the way. In June of 2007 it was time to traverse from theory to prototype so Dr. Nikolay Shkolnik, Founder and CTO at LiquidPiston, purchased SolidWorks. The ability to create both virtual and physical prototypes opened doors for LiquidPiston. Continue Reading →

In a couple of months Unitec, Inc. will pass 25 years in business milestone.  In the summer of 1988 Marty LoSchiavo decided to leave Micro Control Systems, the original name of Cadkey, Inc. and become a reseller of the product.  Yes, Unitec was a 3D CAD provider since the beginning.  I was about 4 months into my 9 years at Cadkey when I attended his going away party.

This morning during a review of technical support cases, one case reminded me on how far we’ve come.  The client had developed a plastic case that housed a hand-held microphone. The client liked the look of the top, but the bottom piece was not looking right to him.  The client constructed the entire shape in one feature – a loft.  This loft was made of a plan view, a profile view and 3 cross-sections.  The top was a conical shape. The plan view was an egg-like shape with the walls drafted.  The top and sides were blended with a constant-radius fillet.

In SolidWorks 2013, using loft was not the very best way to model this part.  The top could have been modeled as a boundary surface.  A face fillet would have been an ideal (and cool) way to blend the top and sides.  We could have developed the part in such a more elegant manner.  What an awesome real-world example for application-specific training –  one of our favorite services.

It turns out the support tech who handled this case, Jeff, found a single missed relationship in one of the sketched.  This change modified the model to the satisfaction of the client.  Jeff would never think to call an injection-molded part complete unless he could get it out of the mold. Jeff was equally satisfied.

This simple case is a classic illustration of the old axiom: the perfect is the enemy of the good (Voltaire). This client doesn’t model fancy plastic enclosures; he had a utilitarian project to complete.  Being a 3D CAD expert is not his endgame.

25 years of experience comes in handle quite a bit, especially when attacking other people’s challenges.  One of the greatest lessons of experience – don’t discount the simple.