SIMTEQ Engineering annually participates as one of the exhibitors and main sponsors of RAPDASA, the South African discussions hub for everything on rapid prototyping and additive manufacturing., SITMEQ Engineering, together with Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence also contribute presentations on the impact Hexagon’s technology contributes to the industry and academics on this field.
The primary theme is the end-to-end solutions Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence brings to businesses to inspire smart manufacturing. The solutions include Hexagon’s Design & Engineering Software (or MSC Software), Production Software and Metrology & Inspection tools to ultimately produce high quality products sustainably.
SIMTEQ Engineering represents the Design & Engineering part, where different simulation technologies are utilised to conceptually design and verify product performance. MSC Apex Generative Design is the latest stress-based topology optimisation solution to define a concepts fit for additive manufacturing design. The conceptual design’s performance can then be verified with the multiple simulation tools from the MSC One portfolio, which include structural analysis, mechanism checks, acoustic properties, fatigue issues, heat and flow characteristics. Additionally, the designed part’s additive process can also be simulated to verify the manufacturing process and prevent unwanted distortions and excessive residual stresses.
Simufact (for metals) and Digimat-AM (for polymers) are industry leading simulation technologies to 3D print parts the first time right. Not only does the technology predict unwanted effects associated with additive manufacturing, but it also compensates for these effects, advise on print orientation and minimise print supports.
The end product of the part does not stop at the design and engineering of the part’s performance and process. This is where Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence fuse their different industry leading technologies to complete the manufacturing process. Moving from the Design & Engineering arena towards Hexagon’s Production Software portfolio, the print job preparation, G-code generation and tool path verification can be done to bring the designed part to life with the additional help of Authentise (Manfucturing Execution System – MES). To ensure an as-designed, quality end product, Hexagon’s Quality Inspection hardware and software completes the final step in the manufacturing process. Various quality control methods are available to ensure the authenticity of the part both on the outside, geometric level and on the inside, molecular level.
The manufacturing chain doesn’t stop there though… Hexagon’s smart manufacturing vision completes the loop by feeding metrology data back into the Design & Engineering simulation tools to ensure the final product performs its purpose in an as-manufactured state. The leveraging of data across the different stages of manufacturing, truly gives business the competitive advantage with Hexagon’s state-of-the-art technologies.
