Cases

Express Pattern’s major goals were to achieve 100% build success, which in turn would help them to achieve their second major goal, 100% on-time deliveries. The main limiting factors to achieving 100% build success for Express Pattern included support failure, improper recoating, and data issues.
Materialise provided a solution to help with two of these areas. To help minimize support failure Materialise’s e-Stage support generation was installed. To minimize data issues Materialise deployed a comprehensive project and process management tool: Magics e-RP.

e-Stage - Increased build success and decreased labor time @ Express Pattern

To address the issue of support failure, one option for Express Pattern was to perform inspections on all parts and manually modify support design. This option would reduce build failures but would also drastically increase the labor hours required to set up each build. Luckily, Materialise was on hand with e-Stage: the automated support generation software. e-Stage more than satisfied Express Pattern’s primary goals. By providing an ultra-reliable method of automatically generating supports, Express Pattern could decrease the labor time required to set up build platforms while reducing build times, resin consumption, and finishing times.

Dave Flynn, joint owner of Express Pattern is extremely satisfied with e-Stage:"This is a more robust and faster process than we have been using all along.”

Magics e-RP - Increased lead-time reliability @ Express Pattern 

Seeking a specialized solution to improve data handling and thus minimize data preparation mistakes and maximize build success, Express Pattern chose Magics e-RP. Magics e-RP is an advanced software solution for the project and process management within additive manufacturing set-ups. It streamlines the entire additive manufacturing process, from order follow-up and data preparation, through platform scheduling and on to production planning and part tracking.

Streamlined order-to-production procedure @ Express Pattern

Prior to the installation of Magics e-RP, the order process at Express Pattern was all paper-based: an order was taken by the sales team, the details were written down in a book that was passed onto the production team, and the files were manually placed on a server. This left the opportunity for human errors wide open and made part traceability extremely laborious, if not impossible. However, the installation of Magics e-RP has drastically improved this process.
Express Pattern’s sales team now places the order in Magics e-RP and uploads the ordered files to Magics e-RP. With instant access to this order information, the work preparation department then performs any part editing and prepares the platforms in Magics RP. The build platforms are uploaded to Magics e-RP along with a comprehensive history log on each part. Like everyone else involved in the process, the finishing and quality control departments have access to machine planning and detailed part information, enabling accurate predictions of finishing workloads and giving Express Pattern the opportunity to attach measurement reports to the project in Magics e-RP.
This centralized method of data storage enables complete transparency of processes for all parties involved. Magics e-RP also records all information relevant to each platform and part to ensure that if a reorder is required, a complete history of the machine, material, build orientation, etc is available to ensure repeatable quality.