With the release of Desktop Metal’s new Studio System, we wanted to publish some highlights of the design guidelines developed by Desktop metal in order to ensure success on your new metal printing system. By following these guidelines, you will be creating part designs that are best suited to utilize the strengths of the Studio System while at the same time minimizing the impact of the process limitations inherent to the tech behind the Studio System. All these design guidelines […]
With the latest release of SOLIDWORKS 2019 SP1, you may have experienced an error when importing your .SLDPRT file directly into GradCAD Print 1.25. While the developers of GrabCAD Print have committed to resolve this issue in their 1.27 release, in the meantime saving your SLDPRT file in the .STL (Surface Tessellated Language) file format will let you continue using GrabCAD Print for your 3D Printing needs. Here is a brief reminder for converting your 3D drawing to the STL […]
Happy New Year from us at CATI to you. We hope everyone is doing well and prepared to tackle 2019 with us. When you’re running your Dimension or Fortus printer from Stratasys, you already know how important it is that material flow from the head unit be as unimpeded as possible. However, things happen and sometimes that material just will not come out no matter how many buttons you push or wrenches you turn. Now, depending on the class of […]
GrabCAD Print version 1.25, January 2019 Build number 1.25.17.47934 released on 4 January 2019 The per-machine installer which was released for beta testing in 1.16 is now generally available from print.grabcad.com. In addition to being much more stable than the current per-user installer, it allows for deployment at schools and enterprise organizations by IT system admins. For more information and instructions on switching over, read our help article. OBJ and VRML files with self-intersections, water tightness / open faces issues, and inverted […]
The F123 series from Stratasys unlocks so much more potential in 3D printing than its predecessors. Faster heat up, faster material swapping, and a modern age touch screen interface are just a few of the things that make these 3D printers stand out among other systems. The biggest addition, in my opinion, is the ability to print multiple materials. The legacy machines could only print ABS, but these systems can now print ABS, ASA, PC-ABS, and the newly released TPU […]
Using the Material Flush/Fill wizard before and after an extended period of inactivity (more than one week) ensures proper printer maintenance and quality printing. Each time you run the wizard you select one of the following processes: Draining printing materials and flushing the system with cleaning fluid Use this process to prepare the printer for a shutdown of more than one week. This process takes about 60 minutes and requires four (4) cleaning-fluid cartridges in the materials drawer. Filling the […]
Creaform 3D Scanners can be used for many more things beyond quality control/inspection of parts or reverse engineering existing parts. With more uses comes less downtime on your Creaform scanner resulting in a better return on investment. One of the less prominent areas you can use your scanner for is to make a ‘Work In Progress’ (WIP) model for use with CNC machining. Sometimes when machining you will have a part that is part way machined from the stock but not […]
These tips and tricks are designed to help you create better, more stable parts using PLA materials on the Stratasys F123 Series printers. If you are going to use PLA materials you will need to install a PLA head and a cooling module in the printer. The instructions for installing the PLA head and cooling module can be found here: https://www.cati.com/blog/2018/08/pla-plastic-replacing-pla-head-f123-series-printer/ Part Design Thin-walled parts are not optimal with the use of PLA, especially ones that only get a single contour […]
From time to time we have seen 3D Printers “Ghost Printing” as we call it. This is when the print block moves as normal during a print job without jetting any material. This is caused by print data getting corrupted. There is a simple fix for this. Here is the process. First, power down the printer. Next, take the black cover off the print block using the two silver thumb screws. Finally, you will see two ribbon cables leading to the two green […]
Introduction to Lesson 1: As you know GrabCAD has a lot of great features; smart default setting, animated slice previews, importing CAD files, organized print queues and tracking material levels to name a few. But when that very troublesome STL file came along that just would not print right, there was Insight. Insight gives the user layer by layer toolpath control, automatically splitting tool paths with unique geometries to be assembled and other abilities beyond your imagination. But as you would […]