DEVELOP3D - Technology for the product lifecycle

For Kiekert, designing a car child lock benefits from CAE

Designing, developing and manufacturing custom locking systems for over 150 years, Kiekert knows a thing or two about what makes car doors click.

Producing side-door latches, latch modules, rear compartment and hood latches and a broad range of actuators for side doors, sliding doors, decklids and various interiors solutions… the list goes on, but few are as important as its child safety locks that are built into the rear car doors.

When the child safety lock is engaged, the rear doors can only be opened from the outside. On newer models, this safety lock is activated or deactivated electronically utilising a small motor within the side door latch by a switch, typically located near the driver’s side door lock switch.

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The entry-level HP Z240 is available in two form factors

HP has unveiled its first Intel ‘Skylake’ workstation, the Z240, which is available in both tower and Small Form Factor (SFF) models.

HP is not able to share details of the yet to be released Intel Xeon E3-1200 v5 Skylake processors that will feature inside. However, it did say the CPUs would have much better integrated graphics performance than the ‘Haswell’ Xeon CPUs found in the HP Z230, which the HP Z240 replaces. The HP Z240 will also support Intel ‘Skylake’ Core i7-6700, Core i5-6600 and Core i5-6500 CPUs.

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The Arburg Freeformer has received its official UK launch this month, with its use of standard granulate polymer the key factor for the injection moulding specialists’ move into 3D printing.

A change in materials might not sound like much, but costing roughly €3 per kilo compared to a specialist 3D printing material costing 100 times that amount, there’s a strong case for materials costing.

Of course, this material is the same used in the injection moulding process, so should allow prototypes built on the machine to maintain a lot of the same properties.

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SolidWorks CEO Gian Paulo Bassi showing SolidWorks on a MacBook

Forget your powerful CAD workstation, soon you will be able to run SolidWorks 2016 on virtually any device with a browser and a fast Internet connection — be that laptop, Mac, or tablet. You won’t need to install anything, even a plug-in.

The new SolidWorks Online Edition relies on cloud technology from Frame, that allows SolidWorks to run on a 3D optimised cloud server that then streams pixels to any client capable with an HTML5-browser.

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A range of Farsoon’s SLS machines [left] will soon be available across Europe and the US under the Prodway’s brand, joining the French companies line of industrial SLA machines [right]

Prodways, a subsidiary of French nuclear, defence and technology company Groupe Gorgé, has continued its expansion into 3D printing with the signing of a major partnership with the Chinese company Hunan Farsoon High-Tech.

Based on Farsoon’s Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) technologies for plastic and metal powders, a full range of “Prodways powered by Farsoon” 3D printers will be marketed worldwide by Prodways in the coming months, together with related materials.

Added to Prodways’ substantial industrial SLA offerings, it means the company will become the only non-American company to offer a wide range of technologies using plastic and metal powders, as well as liquid resins.

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The winner of the AMD FirePro / Dell Precision workstation competition has been drawn out of a virtual hat.

Congratulations go to John Dunten, design draftsman at Gagemaker, a Texas-based developer and manufacturer of precision mechanical inspection equipment, who scoops the Dell Precision Tower 5810 workstation with AMD FirePro graphics.

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To date, the only picture of the AMD Multiuser GPU is of a single height card.

AMD has made its long awaited entrance to graphics virtualisation with what it describes as the world’s first hardware-based virtualised GPU solution. Designed for servers, the AMD Multiuser GPU can support up to 15 concurrent users on a single card.

AMD’s big sell for its Multiuser GPU is that it was built from the ground up for virtualisation, directly inside the silicon. According to AMD, this means the GPU can ‘deliver consistent and predictable performance’, which sounds like a sideswipe at Nvidia and its GRID technology, which AMD says uses software to virtualise its GPU.

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