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Designing products for optimal user experiences, minimum manufacturing effort, and potential regulatory compliance is a difficult balancing act, especially within a COVID-19 work-from-home environment and amidst trade and political uncertainties. To help engineers navigate these considerations and deliver optimal product designs, Fictiv yesterday unveiled its first “Masterclass” on design for manufacturability for computer numerical control machining.

“The key to bringing a new product to market quickly and affordably is understanding how design choices directly lead to effort in manufacturing,” stated Dave Evans, co-founder and CEO of Fictiv. “Without careful consideration, it’s easy to get locked in early to a design that is higher cost and takes longer to manufacture. We created this DfM Masterclass series to provide engineers with key, proven insights for minimizing challenges and maximizing opportunity.”

San Francisco-based Fictiv said it offers a portfolio of optimized manufacturing processes for hardware companies of all sizes. The company’s digital manufacturing ecosystem combines a cloud platform; design, quoting, billing, and logistics systems; and an orchestration engine that manages a network of highly vetted and monitored manufacturing partners. Over the past six years, Fictiv said it has manufactured more than 10 million parts for early-stage companies and large enterprises alike.

Masterclass developed by design experts

Fictiv said it developed the three-part engineering Masterclass using industry best practices and with extensive input from its own manufacturing engineers and experienced mechanical product design experts. It is intended to provide an updated take on and share new insights into modern design for manufacturability (DfM) strategies and techniques.

“The course is designed specifically with robotics, aerospace, and medical device product designers in mind because part complexity in those sectors can increase manufacturing effort exponentially,” said Evans. “It’s critical that engineers within these industries acquire an understanding of how manufacturing effort scales with complexity and how to reduce effort as much as possible given the design requirements.”

Fictiv said course participants will learn about the following:

• The “effort” model for understanding how five key design parameters impact cost, lead time, and risk
• Key design rules for least effort, including tolerance, part geometry, part size, materials, and look and feel
• Techniques for reducing effort while still fulfilling design requirements
• Reducing effort in complex designs specific to the aerospace, medical, and robotics industries
• When to transition from CNC machining to another manufacturing process
• Optimal materials for least effort CNC machining across plastics, soft metals, and hard metals.

In conjunction with the online Masterclass, Fictiv is also hosting a three-part webinar series that provides students with additional opportunities to engage and discuss DfM issues with a panel of experts.

Upon completing the class, participants can test their mastery by completing a Knowledge Test to earn a Masterclass badge, which can be proudly displayed on their resumes and LinkedIn profiles, said Fictiv.

To register for the class or associated webinars, visit Fictiv’s Web site.