Blog
Star Rapid’s blog aims to share our hard earned knowledge on manufacturing and product development. We hope these articles help you to optimize your product design and better understand the world of rapid prototyping, rapid tooling, 3D printing and low-volume manufacturing.
Manufacturing Cycle Times and How To Improve Them
Every business has a vested interest in carefully monitoring its productivity, especially in a manufacturing environment where repetitive tasks can be standardized and optimized. The most common metrics used for this purpose are manufacturing cycle times, lead times, and takt times. Progressive companies try to control these factors in order
Color Consistency in Plastic Injection Molding
It’s a big challenge to achieve color consistency for large production runs of plastic injection molded parts. To ensure consistency when molding colors, it’s essential that you have careful process control at every step. It’s important to note that plastic color is highly subjective – subjective in how you see
Machine Screw Thread Applications for Product Developers
In part one of this series, we looked at the fundamentals of machine screw thread design. This information is invaluable for engineers and product designers, and it’s also a fascinating look at one of history’s fundamental machine tools. Now that we know something about threads and screws in a general sense, it’s time to apply that information to specific
What Every Engineer Needs to Know About Machine Screw Thread Design
Machine screw threads, along with many other kinds of threaded fittings, are used around us every day in millions of applications. In fact, they’re so ubiquitous that they largely go unnoticed by most of us, and to the inexperienced eye they all look and perform pretty much the same. In
Five Rapid Prototyping Solutions For Great Results
Ever since people started making stuff – and then tried to make new and improved stuff – there’s been a need for prototypes. They’re used for design evaluation, testing, certification, proof-of-concept, crowdfunding campaigns and as bridges to full production. If you need high-quality rapid prototypes, may we suggest you consider
The Top 4 Surface Treatments for Production Tooling
TiN coating on mold tool. Image courtesy of prirev.com.All manufacturing tools are subject to incredibly harsh working conditions and must withstand a lot of wear and tear. Tools used for plastic injection molding are no exception, where corrosive resins and abrasive fibers, injected under tons of pressure, can quickly destroy
