In the area of industrial tooling, the demand for customized solutions has never been greater. Conventional manufacturing technologies often struggle to keep pace with increasing production needs, leading to inefficiencies and generic solutions. However, with the development of 3D printing technologies, companies are reshaping the landscape of tooling, jigs and fixtures.
Jigs, fixtures, and other manufacturing aids are a great fit for 3D printing, but companies often struggle when it comes to creating the designs. Designing parts manually consumes considerable time and resources from engineers, leading to increased costs and extended delivery times. A growing number of companies such as Audi Sport and Deutsche Bahn have discovered an optimized solution: Automated design software by companies such as trinckle.
fixturemate, their specialized software, empowers users to effortlessly design and customize tools, jigs, and fixtures, leading to significant reductions in part costs and delivery times. It also allows more people to participate in the design process, keeping designs closely aligned with the users’ needs and freeing up skilled engineers for higher priority tasks.
The limitations of manual design processes is something the tooling industry has struggled with for a long time. Historically, creating tools, jigs and fixtures has been a specialized, time-consuming process which results in generic solutions that fail to adapt to the diverse needs of automated industrial operations. With the rise of automation and constantly changing production processes, the demand for individualized solutions has dramatically increased, presenting a significant challenge to manufacturers.
3D printing technologies provide a solution to these challenges by enabling customized components to be manufactured in batch sizes as small as one, revolutionizing the conventional one-size-fits-all approach. This means lightweight, robust tools tailored to specific applications and processes can be manufactured, leading to better efficiency and flexibility in industrial environments. Most metal and polymer 3D printing technologies can be used to create tools, jigs and fixtures, but low-cost technologies such extrusion-based 3D printing are a great fit: They lead to low cost-per-part and a quick return on investment. They are also easy to use and a good use case for the technology beyond prototyping.
Besides the manufacturing of parts, creating designs is a major challenge for companies. Manually designing parts with CAD software requires significant time and specialized engineering resources, which can lead to higher design costs and longer delivery times. To address this, companies across various industries, including automotive and transport, have turned to automated design tools. One such solution is fixturemate by trinckle, which streamlines the design process and reduces complexity.
The following case studies show insights into how various companies have used fixturemate to streamline design workflows to produce 3D printed tools, jigs, and fixtures.
Audi Sport is the high-performance car manufacturing subsidiary of Audi, responsible for vehicles such as the Audi RS3, the Audi R8, as well as performance racing cars. Compared to mainstream car manufacturers, the variety of vehicles is high, requiring a broad range of specialized tools, jigs, and fixtures during their production. For example, during the production of Audi e-tron GT, Audi Sport needed to design approximately 200 new fixtures, jigs, and other tools. Traditionally, each of these items requires a skilled engineer to manually design it in CAD software, diverting important resources from the more challenging aspects of automotive production.
To solve these challenges, Audi Sport has used fixturemate from trinckle. This design automation software can be used by engerinners as well as trainees. The software also gives additional flexibility for last-minute changes, making the design process more accessible and keeping design accuracy high. Using the software, operational efficiency is enhanced: The average design time can be reduced from approximately 2 – 4 hours to 10 – 20 minutes per design, which marks a 95% time saving. 3D printing the parts leads to a cost reduction of 80% and cuts delivery time from 6 weeks to 48 hours.
"In CAD we usually need two to four hours to produce a design, depending on the size of the part. With fixturemate we can produce a usable fixture in minutes. Because it's easy to use, we can bring in trainees and show them how to use it."
Deutsche Bahn is the main German operator of transportation services and infrastructure and has over 300,000 employees. The company operates a high number of trains and other infrastructure from different generations, making maintenance a challenging task. Deutsche Bahn’s engineering team is therefore focusing on improving maintenance efficiency across their many facilities. Despite many design ideas for fixtures, limited access to design personnel and CAD tools creates a design bottleneck which hinders the maintenance of customized parts.
fixturemate provides Deutsche Bahn with a solution forby democratizing the design work to a wider range of employees. Besides speeding up the design process, the software allows for the standardization of key components such as baseplates. The simplicity of the software fosters innovation and improves 3D printing processes, eliminating the need for costly CAD tools and specialized skills.
"Trinckle's Fixturemate software has seamlessly integrated design automation into our additive manufacturing processes for tooling at Deutsche Bahn, particularly for 3D printing assembly fixtures and carrier systems. The software has drastically reduced our design times and costs. Even without special hardware or expertise, the software can be easily used in a web browser by anyone at DB, driving the adoption of additive manufacturing."
trinckle develops software solutions for the age of additive manufacturing, commonly known as 3D printing. Their flagship product, fixturemate, empowers any user to design custom fixtures in under 20 minutes without needing CAD expertise. All trinckle applications are powered by their paramate engine, enabling robust custom design automation solutions that streamline workflows and provide an intuitive platform for smart product configuration.
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