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Radio Flyer cuts ebike prototype time radically with Fuse X1 large-format SLS 3D printer

Radio Flyer cut prototype lead times for its Flyer Loop cargo ebike frame from two months to two days using Formlabs' new Fuse X1 SLS large-format 3D printer. "We can now print an entire Flyer Loop cargo ebike overnight and be gluing it together the next day," said Agostino LoBello, product development engineer at Radio Flyer. "I can iterate three times as often with nine times less labor." The Fuse X1 delivers production-quality parts with 50% lower costs and triple the throughput of comparable industrial systems, featuring automated powder handling and a compact, easy-to-install design. [Credit: Image courtesy of Formlabs]
View the video.

Compact industrial sand 3D printer

ExOne has launched the S-Print Pro, a compact industrial sand 3D printer that brings production-grade binder jetting to smaller foundries, pattern shops, and print service providers. Aimed at businesses competing on cost and flexibility, it handles low-volume casting, spare parts, and custom components. The system processes furan binder with silica sand, CeraBeads, or silicon carbide.
Learn more about this capable machine.

Fast-cure composite for aero and defense manufacturing

Toray Composite Materials America has launched 3960-FC, a fast-cure variant of its high-performance 3960 prepreg system for mission-critical aerospace and defense applications. This material reduces cure time by up to 45% while maintaining proven mechanical performance, stiffness, and exceptional toughness. It is highly compatible with automated manufacturing technologies like AFP and ATL, as well as traditional processing methods.
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Metal finishing: With rising carbide prices, when cermet makes sense

As critical raw material access tightens, manufacturers are rethinking cutting tool usage. While essential, carbide is often unnecessary for finishing processes. Cermet -- a ceramic-metal composite -- offers an excellent alternative, delivering exceptional fracture and wear resistance for these specific machining stages.
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Full-color 3D-printing Design Guide from Xometry

With Xometry's PolyJet 3D-printing service, you can order full-color 3D prints easily. Their no-cost design guide will help you learn about different aspects of 3D printing colorful parts, how to create and add color to your models, and best practices to keep in mind when printing in full color. Learn how to take full advantage of the 600,000 unique colors available in this flexible additive process.
Get the Xometry guide.

Next-gen SLA materials rival traditional thermoplastics

Formlabs has announced two new SLA materials that bring 3D printing significantly closer to being a manufacturing method for end-use part production. Tough 1000 Resin and a significantly improved Tough 2000 Resin join Tough 1500 Resin, forming the new Tough Resin family. These resilient engineering materials stand up to harsh environments, impact, and repeated wear, all while delivering a dark, matte surface finish with crisp details when printed on Form 4 Series 3D printers.
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Surface inspection: From Army depot to factory floor

Born from U.S. Army requirements for rotorcraft inspection, the GelSight Modulus 3D surface measurement system has surpassed 100 units sold to commercial and Department of Defense customers. The handheld, micron-scale tool with interchangeable probe tips delivers fast, high-res measurements in places traditional tools can't reach.
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What is Cold Metal Fusion?

Cold Metal Fusion is an open industry standard for sinter-based metal additive manufacturing. It combines polymer SLS design freedom with reliable debinding and sintering workflows, enabling complex geometries, lightweighting, lattice structures, conformal cooling channels, and high-precision metal parts with predictable shrink behavior. Now available from TriMech Group, this process offers a faster, cost-effective way to produce strong, high-performance metal parts.
Learn more from TriMech Group.

Metal 3D printing: EOS adds four new materials

Industrial 3D-printing supplier EOS has added four new metal additive manufacturing materials to its portfolio: an iron-nickel alloy that boasts stability under fluctuating temps, a nickel alloy with high strength and extreme corrosion resistance, a low-alloyed steel prized for its high toughness and strength, and an industrial-grade stainless steel. Each has been optimized for EOS Laser Powder Bed Fusion systems.
Get all the details.

New materials and finishes from Quickparts

Quickparts has introduced DuraKor, ThermaKor, and vapor smoothing to expand its production-capable materials and finishing portfolio. The new plastics provide polypropylene-like toughness, chemical resistance, and high-temperature stability, while vapor smoothing improves sealing and surface quality. Together, these capabilities help engineers validate designs, refine performance, and transition efficiently from prototypes to scalable manufacturing.
Learn more.

What's the latest in SLA 3D printing?

Learn about the latest offerings in SLA printing from 3D Systems, including the introduction of SLA 825 Dual, the company's most advanced large-frame Stereolithography printer. Other new products include ArrayCast investment casting software that allows users to effortlessly create customized casting trees (complete with configurable runners, sprues, and end effectors), Accura SbF (the latest SLA casting resin), and Accura Xtreme Black (which delivers low shrinkage, large, functional SLA prototype parts with sharp detail).
Learn about all the new 3D Systems products.

meviy cuts CNC milling lead times to just 4 days

meviy, the on-demand custom parts manufacturing service developed by MISUMI Group, has upgraded its Expedite+ service with improved lead times for CNC Milled parts. Customers can now have their parts shipped in as few as four days through meviy's fastest delivery option. The enhanced service helps manufacturers and engineers stay on schedule when projects are behind or production is interrupted. Supported materials include steels and aluminums. Check out their instant quoting too.
Learn more.

Top Tech Tip: How do you 3D print STL files?

Learn the basics of 3D printing STL files -- the files that serve as the digital foundation for 3D printing -- and a whole lot more from the experts at Xometry. These files have advantages, of course, but did you know they have disadvantages too? Also learn about STL tools and programs, and how to reduce file size or even repair a file you are having trouble with.
Read the Xometry article.

When metals can't survive: Machined ceramics as an alternative

Technical Ceramics are so hard and wear resistant that they cannot be machined with conventional tools -- but they can outlast and outperform other materials in demanding or harsh applications. INSACO's proprietary diamond grinding process and specialized techniques developed over many decades allow the company to produce and document parts to exacting specifications consistently. Learn all about the alternatives you have when metals just can't take it.
Read the INSACO article.

Metal 3D printing: Right at your desktop

From prototyping to tooling or batch production of end-use parts, the Studio System 2 from Desktop Metal brings metal 3D printing to any office, studio, or lab setting. This powder- and laser-free system consists of an easy-to-adopt two-step process: print using pre-bound metal rod feedstock and then sinter. It requires minimal training and operator intervention. Combined with next-gen Separable Supports and a software-controlled workflow, the Studio System makes metal 3D printing simpler than ever. This platform offers more materials than any other metal extrusion 3D-printing system on the market. They include Inconel 625, titanium (Ti64), copper, tool steels, and stainless steels.
View the video and learn more.

Sandia report compiles lessons learned from 'perfect heists' for national security

In 2003, the unthinkable happened at Belgium's Antwerp Diamond Center. Thieves broke into its reputedly impenetrable vault and made off with hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of diamonds, gold, cash, and other valuables.

Through years of meticulous planning, they got past police officers less than 200 ft away, access controls into the building, a combination-and-key-lock vault door, a magnetic seal on the vault door and motion, infrared, light, and seismic detectors within the vault.

The Antwerp Diamond Center theft and other sophisticated, high-value heists show that motivated criminals can find ways to overcome every obstacle between them and their targets. Can the Energy and Defense departments, responsible for analyzing, designing, and implementing complex systems to protect vital national security assets, learn from security failures in the banking, art, and jewelry worlds?

Sandia National Laboratories systems analyst Jarret Lafleur set out two years ago to answer that question. "There are many insights to be gained from studying high-value heists and related crimes that could be applied to Sandia's work in physical security," he said. "Our work focuses on securing nuclear materials and other assets. Those kinds of attacks and threats are extremely rare, which is good, but give us very little historical information to draw upon."

Sandia National Laboratories managers Alex Roesler, left, and Luke Purvis, center, and systems analyst Jarret Lafleur shown inside a Bank of Italy vault in a historic Livermore, CA, building, studied 23 high-value heists that occurred in the last three decades for lessons learned that can applied to designing complex security systems to protect vital national security assets. [Photo: Dino Vournas]

 

 

 

 

Lafleur, Luke Purvis, manager of Sandia's National Security Systems Analysis group, and Alex Roesler, manager of the Assurance Technologies and Assessments group, published the research in a report "The Perfect Heist: Recipes from Around the World" (SAND 2014-1790), which details 23 crimes, their categorization and lessons learned. Lafleur also presented the "The Perfect Heist" to numerous audiences.

Compiling the crimes
Lafleur found there hadn't been a comprehensive study of sophisticated and high-value heists in more than two decades. "When we dug into the details, we found several areas worthy of further study that could inform our approach to physical security," he said. "Two examples are the roles of insiders in successful heists and the ways that redundancy in a security system can affect the behavior of humans in the loop."

Using public information sources, Lafleur chose 23 worldwide heists that occurred in the past three decades, notable for the value of assets stolen, innovation, and complexity. Those include the Vastberga Helicopter Heist (Sweden, 2009) in which thieves descended from a helicopter into a cash depot by smashing through a skylight; the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Art Heist (United States, 1990) where burglars posed as police officers to deceive and subdue museum guards; and the Securitas Cash Depot Heist (Britain, 2006) that saw robbers abduct the manager, his wife, and their child to force him to let them into the depot and provide key details about its security.

Lafleur, Purvis, and Roesler compiled the results in a Heist Methods and Characteristics Database. They analyzed the results qualitatively and quantitatively to describe the range and diversity of criminal methods and identify characteristics that are common or uncommon in such high-value heists. The analysis focused on seven areas: defeated security measures and devices; deception methods; timing and target selection; weapons employed; resources and risk acceptance; insiders; and failures and mistakes.

Deception, patience are common ingredients
While methods and implementation of the heists varied greatly, there were common factors. At least one form of deception was used in 21 of the heists, ranging from impersonating law enforcement to use of decoy vehicles to concealing surveillance equipment. Insiders -- willing, unwitting, and coerced -- played a role in the majority of cases. The Antwerp Diamond Center's building manager even provided blueprints to the heist mastermind, thinking he was just another tenant.

"I learned from this study that these thieves have a lot of patience. Most spent months and even years planning. They were very deliberate in how they defeated security measures, and those methods were often very low-tech, like using hair spray to disable infrared sensors," said Lafleur. "In most of these heists, multiple security measures were defeated."

Another finding is that weapons aren't needed to steal a lot of money. Four of the top five heists, in terms of value, were weaponless.

Source: Sandia

Published September 2014

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