The Digital Thread

When working in the Space industry, post-processing options are often the difference between a good idea and a successful project. Whilst most of your focus will be on primary production methods, this blog outlines how secondary services can greatly impact your final project.

Driving innovation in any industry is difficult, but it’s particularly tricky in the space industry. Parts need to be reliable, withstand increasingly harsh conditions, function for extended periods without maintenance and remain lightweight yet tough enough to withstand the forces of launch and space travel. With these requirements in mind, it's important to select the right manufacturing method.

Consider cost, part performance when choosing PEEK or PEI (Ultem) Plastics for CNC machining or injection moulding your parts.

While CNC Milling has been around for more than 50 years, the technology is moving on and recent advances see automation of the entire process, from design right through to finished part. Such advances make it a technology that is readily available to all, for high or low volume quantities, prototyping to final parts and with lead times of as short as a day.

As the world’s leading digital manufacturer, we have added Aluminium 5083-H111 (3.3547 or AlMg4.5Mn0.7) to our range of over 40 stocked metal and plastic materials for our fast turnaround CNC service. The material is widely used in extreme environments with its high magnesium content making it highly resistant to saltwater and industrial chemicals.

Light weight and strength help aluminum and titanium excel for 3D-printed and machined parts.

Our new CNC Flexible Lead Time option puts you in control of when you want your CNC parts shipped and how much you pay.

Understanding CNC manufacturing costs

In this particular article we’ll take a look at the new platform for when uploading parts for CNC machining – Protolabs’ world-leading service for rapid prototypes and end-use production parts.

We’ve launched a big block rapid CNC machining service for aluminium 6082 parts. With a reliable shipping time as fast as 1 day from the initial CAD upload, we can now mill from blocks of up to 559mm x 356mm x 95mm.