Latest articles

The flexibility in adjusting plastic mechanical properties makes much of our technological advancement possible, from being able to produce fuel-efficient jumbo jets with high strength, to lightweight carbon fiber-reinforced plastic that can be made into impact-resistant silicone phone cases that save our precious phones from shattering into pieces. This article provides an overview of the […]

To most people, plastics might seem all the same, but to an engineer, plastics come in families, have cousin materials, and have other materials that are as different as cats are from dogs. Of course, our clients expect us to worry about these details, and as nerds, the minute differences between materials are a source […]

Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing (GD&T) is a language of symbols and standards designed and used by engineers and manufacturers to describe a product and facilitate communication between entities working together to produce something. By deepening your knowledge around how to create a well structured GD&T, you will improve communication with your machine shop and ensure everyone […]

We love the invention and design development process. We love seeing the concepts come together, love working through iterations of prototypes and finally (finally!) getting a design just right, fulfilling all the technical and aesthetic requirements. But do you know what’s even better? Seeing your designs in full-scale manufacture. Unfortunately, once your design is beautiful […]

Design for injection molding has clear rules: Add draft. No undercuts. Round edges. Clear parting lines. Uniform walls, not too thick. But learning about advanced plastic manufacturing is like visiting Morpheus’s dojo in The Matrix: Some rules can be bent. Others can be broken. But breaking these rules is costly. Sharp edges require additional machining […]

Heat and pressure most famously make diamonds. But they do more than that: Nearly every plastic product in your house was made with the same two forces. From the 1950s until now, injection molding has dominated consumer manufacturing, giving us everything from action figures to denture containers. Despite its incredible versatility, injection molding does have […]

We have some great new updates to Fictiv’s quoting technology to share with you! We know many of you are working on cutting edge products across industries including aerospace, robotics, automotive, and medical devices, iterating on parts with complex, tight tolerance features. This means feature-specific tolerance callouts on technical drawings are the norm, not the […]

So you’ve got a part to design, and the first step is to determine what material it should be made out of. You decide the part should be plastic, and it should be CNC machined, but does the selection stop there? Nope, there are a plethora of plastics to choose from, each with its own […]

Anodizing is one of the most common surface treatment options available for cnc aluminum. We’ve probably all seen anodized pieces used in a variety of applications, ranging from some of Apple’s iPhones and iPods to sprockets on motorcycles and karts. This article will walk you through the design considerations, as well as the applications, for […]

Robotics stands out as one of the fields where both innovation and adoption will benefit most from the aftermath of the pandemic.