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Carbon Design Partner | Sherpa Design

“Having design services and manufacturing in house lets us stay on top of product development and really speeds things up. Sherpa design is a full-service engineering and design firm located in Portland Oregon. We offer mechanical engineering, industrial design as well as manufacturing. We work on all kinds of products from bike saddles to headset replacement parts and then we use Carbon 3D printers to support those design and engineering efforts. The Carbon printers are very consistent. They can do detail really well, even from multiple axis. Currently we have three M2 printers, one brand new M3 Max, and the Carbon Smart Part Washer. Everything in our company is design focused, even our 3D printing department, and we take advantage of the design skills our company has to ensure that we’re getting the best parts possible. “ Connor Shimamoto – Additive Manufacturing Application Specialist – Sherpa Design

NX CAD Tips and Tricks - Top Selection Priority

Selection Priority within NX determines what gets selected and what the order of priority of that selection is for your tool. When selecting an edge NX's default selection is "feature" - so when you highlight an object it will highlight and entire extrude. If you want to grab and edge you could use your quick pick, but another way is to change the top selection priority. You can change to edge for example and that will let you grab and edge of a part much easier. There are also hotkeys to make these changes. Watch this video for a quick walkthrough on this shortcut.

TESTING THE NEW CARBON M3 MAX

This month we took possession of the latest 3D Printer from Carbon, the M3 Max. The M3 brings several benefits to our workflow including: - Self-Installable. The self-installation allowed for a faster start up and flexibility to move the machine around our lab as needed. - Force feedback and IR-based resin heating. This improves surface finish, speed, and our ability to resolve delicate features. - Increased build volume. With a platform over twice the area of our M2s, we’ll be able to print larger geometries and consolidate parts while using the same resolution. Build volume 307mm x 163mm x 305mm. Here we are running a test on some complex complex lattice designs with incredible performance properties. https://sherpa-design.com/capabilities/3d-printing/ 

NX to 5-axis CNC Machining Custom Bike Brake Lever

Digital twins have long existed in the manufacturing space by incorporating true G-code simulation directly in NX CAM. Our manufacturing team can identify problems in the digital domain before collisions or mistakes are made in the real world. 5-axis machining reduces setups and ensures more dimensionally accurate parts. Here we are machining a lever for a custom bike brake lever.

Designing the Perfect Coffee Filter

The Able Brewing Story: Keith Gehrke, co-owner of local Portland coffee shop, Coava, was home one morning attempting to brew with his manual drip Chemex Coffee Maker when he realized he was out of paper filters. So began the hunt for reusable filters, a hunt that ultimately led to the design of the KONE coffee filter. Keith partnered with Sherpa Design to create this successful consumer product. The business evolved (now called Able Brewing) and many years later they turned again to Sherpa for their consumer product design. This time the goal was to expand the filter line, creating reusable stainless-steel filters that would bring that amazing flavor to the rest of the coffee makers on the market. The Basket: The first new product was a flat-bottom filter basket that will work as a reusable filter in 80% of the coffee makers on the market.

“We polled our engineering group and they said, you know, we need some training. And NX training was at the top of the list of what people were looking for. And we've hired probably 10 new engineers over the last several years. So we have a group of new employees as well as experienced engineers. So we were looking for training that wasn't just for one or the other, but for really both.

Sherpa has been doing this sort of thing for decades in the Portland area. ESCO has used Sherpa in trainings in the past. It's always been a good experience.

What I like about working with Sherpa is they've got a great catalog … they come to the table with a, you know, out-of-the-box, really good training. You can pick and choose what works for you.

They've also got this video training that you can take a prerequisite to kind of get everybody on the same page before they get to that day one live training.

And they're also just very willing to adjust and improve as you go.

So all that just adds up to a good experience.”

Ray Morris – Engineering Support – ESCO Corporation