Novastar

Novastar Hosts HP 3D Printer Demo Center Open House
September 6th, 2018 12pm-4pm

February 19, 2018 By Novastar

The HP Multi Jet Fusion 3D Printer is experiencing broad adoption as an additive manufacturing solution. Come Experience HP3D First Hand.

Register Now!

Thursday, September 6th, 2018
Open House 12:00 pm – 4:00 pm
12901 Newburgh, Livonia, MI 48150

Crowned 2017’s “Innovation of the Year” by the 3D Printing Industry Awards, HP’s Multi Jet Fusion 3D Printing technology is being rapidly adopted as a prototyping and additive manufacturing solution. MJF has seen various upgrades over the past few months, all focused on improving the product for industrial manufacturing.

We invite you to experience the technology in a small group and visit with HP 3D Printing experts to discuss how 3D printing is revolutionizing manufacturing. Explore the possibilities by examining a vast array of parts printed at our HP 3D Printing Demo Center.

See registration page for details: Register Here

We hope you will join us Thursday, September 6th, 2018, at 12901 Newburgh, Livonia, MI 48150.
Drop by between 12:00pm – 4:00pm. Refreshments provided.

If you can’t make it but are interested in the technology, please contact Josiah Klaus at 734-453-8003 or jk@novastar.net to arrange a meeting and discuss printing your parts with HP’s Jet Fusion Technology.

Registration is limited – additional guests are welcome but please have them register . Feel free to forward this invitation to others in your organization who may be interested.

Customer Testimonials:

“We are proud to be the first service bureau in Ohio to offer HP’s Multi Jet Fusion technology. HP has developed a game-changing 3D printing solution that will enable Aerosport and our customers to produce production quality parts like never before.” – Geoff Combs, owner Aerosport Modeling

“I strongly believe that once designers start to adopt the out-of-the-box thinking and boundless creativity that HP Multi Jet Fusion allows, we’ll see some amazing advancements in product design, innovation and performance. The companies that embrace this new mindset early will see a huge competitive advantage” – Corey Weber Co-Founder Forecast 3D

Introducing the HP 3D Multi Jet Fusion 4210 Printing Solution

INTEGR8™ To Focus on Smart Factory Breakthroughs, Global Manufacturing in the Industry 4.0 Era – Novastar to Exhibit at INTEGR8™ Nov. 9 in Detroit

November 1, 2017 By Novastar

Automation Alley INTEGR8™ Conference

Published by Novastar Solutions (Livonia, MI)

LIVONIA, MI | NOVEMBER 20 – Novastar and more than 500 technology and manufacturing professionals converged on Detroit, Nov. 9, 2017 for a day of Industry 4.0 at Automation Alley’s first-ever Integr8™ conference and expo.

Novastar exhibited HP’s new Multi Jet Fusion 3D Printer with an extensive array of parts printed with the new technology and videos that demonstrated the solution — which is twice as fast and half the cost of the competition’s.

Automotive Testing Expo 2017 – Novastar to Exhibit at Booth #7034

October 16, 2017 By Novastar

Novi Suburban Collection Showplace October 24-25-26

Published by Novastar Solutions (Livonia, MI)

LIVONIA, MI OCTOBER 16 – NovaStar Calibration, a leading provider of instrument calibration services in southeastern Michigan, will be an Exhibitor in booth # 7034 at the 2017 Automotive Testing Expo North America to be held at the Suburban Collection Showplace in Novi, MI October 24-25-26, 2017.

Over 300 of the world’s leading automotive test equipment manufacturers and test service providers will display their latest technologies to improve vehicle reliability, durability, safety and quality at the 14th annual North America Automotive Testing Expo. Co-located with the Auto Test Expo are the Engine Expo 2017, the Autonomous Vehicle Interior Design & Technology Symposium, Autonomous Vehicle Safety Regulation World Congress 2017 and the Autonomous Vehicle Test & Development Symposium.

Contact Guy Howe, Novastar Director of Metrology at gh@novastar.net or by calling 734-453-8003 to answer your questions about calibration services.

The Battery Show 2017 – Novastar to Exhibit at Booth #1921

Four Ways CAD/CAE is Advancing Wind Energy

April 2, 2015 By Novastar

Despite the recent fall in oil prices, fulfilling long-term energy needs will likely still require developing alternate sources. The wind energy industry is one that continues to grow and holds significant promise. According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), there are now over 53,000 turbines in the US, more than double the number from 2009. AWEA also says that over that same period of time, 41% of the new energy generating capacity in the US has come from wind power with over $140 billion invested in the last 10 years.

In 2016, The Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) reported that wind power drives 486.8 gigawatts of energy across the global market which comprises more than 90 countries. The US Department of Energy estimates that 20% of US electricity could come from the existing wind industry infrastructure.

Clearly, wind power is here to stay, and the challenge is on to make it more efficient and cost effective. CAD (computer-aided design) and CAE (computer-aided engineering) are playing a big part in making that happen. Here are four areas where CAD design is helping to advance wind energy.

1. Improving Offshore Wind Energy with CAD & CAE

To get the most benefit, turbines need to be located where wind is most plentiful. In most cases, that happens to be in the ocean where the majority of wind farms are now being built. Harsh ocean conditions contain multiple challenges, many of which can be addressed in the design phase using CAD/CAE.

Securing turbine platforms to the ocean floor and building them to withstand the effects of tides, waves, currents and high winds can pose particular difficulties. Using advanced CAD/CAE software allows engineers to work out many of these problems before construction even begins. This streamlines the overall time line of the project and ensures the long-term viability of these structures even before the first equipment is sent out to the platform.

2. Maximizing Efficiency with Innovative CAD Design

First generation turbines featured standard blade designs as part of every installation. Thanks to CAD, turbines today are being designed to operate more efficiently. Innovative designs enable wind towers to reactively adjust to catch wind at appropriate angles to maximize power and to compensate for sudden shifts in wind patters. Integrating these improvements increases effectiveness and lowers overall costs – two crucial elements in moving the technology forward.

3. Combining Design and Simulation with CAD/CAE

As the technology develops, turbine designs need to be constantly improved to maximize utilization. With CAD, designers are now able to not only review various manufacturing configurations, but they are also able to simulate the results of their designs. This type of testing early in the process uncovers potential design errors, accelerates the project schedule, and reduces overall costs.

4. Improving Wind Energy Data Management

Big data is pervading every aspect of business and the wind energy industry is no exception. Today’s turbines are capable of collecting minute data, but parsing that into actionable information can sometimes be difficult. Integrating CAD and Product Data Management (PDM) software is helping to overcome this challenge. Incorporating the massive amount of data coming from large wind farms can be invaluable when making decisions about future design revisions.

CAD/CAE design will continue to have a major impact on the wind energy technology industry and will go a long way toward meeting the economic and engineering challenges of this rapidly growing manufacturing sector.

How Tesla GPUs are Revolutionizing CAD Use

March 30, 2015 By Novastar

Like organizations in most other industries, companies that rely on CAD technology face increasing pressure to reduce lead times, cut costs, and improve productivity. Balancing those needs while still maintaining a high level of quality is challenging. Advances in CAD processor technology, however, are proving to be a way for firms to meet that challenge.

Workstations built with traditional CPU technology gave way to stations employing GPU processing resulting in a significant uptick in performance. However, an even bigger boost in processing power has come with the use of high end Physics processing cards – more commonly known as Tesla cards for the brand name of the leader in the industry. The use of Tesla cards for visualization and simulation has dramatically changed the mid and high end workstation spaces and is revolutionizing the cluster space. These cards eliminate some of the lineal gains you get from faster processors and make these workstations capable of producing far more analysis than previously possible. With lower prices and better drivers, these powerful tools are more accessible to CAD operators in companies of all sizes.

CPU vs. GPU vs. Tesla Card

Conventional CPU processing – a series of discrete actions performed sequentially one after the other – was limited and slow. To increase processing speeds, you had to purchase a new computer with a faster processor. The use of GPU cards – short for Graphics Processing Unit – to perform large-scale parallel problems allows certain tasks to be accomplished orders of magnitude faster. In a GPU workstation, resource intensive portions of an application that can be evaluated in parallel are handled by the GPU, leaving the CPU dedicated to run the user end of the application. The result is fast, reliable rendering presented the way CAD users require. Upgrading a GPU is straightforward, performed every few years by swapping out a PCI card on a workstation.

As effective as a GPU is, it pales next to the new generation of Tesla card processor technology. Tesla cards are designed to support specialized graphics engines that deliver the rasterizers and shaders required by professional CAD applications. They have taken the traditional GPU processor and added a supplementary chipset that specializes in the kind of high-end mathematics commonly used in the simulation CAD/CAM design employing finite element analysis.

These high powered cards can rapidly handle advanced simulations such as higher calculus, non-destructive impact testing, linear analysis of a spline bending and flexing, simulating what a part would look like as it bends, and what structural properties it has at various bend points. Performing this with a typical GPU is limited as their primary purpose is to display graphics. Tesla cards are solely dedicated to performing parallel problems rapidly, as they are optimized for calculations only.

Tesla Card Advantages

As an example, there could be a simulation that would take an hour to complete. With a Tesla card, it could be performed much more rapidly on the order of a few minutes. Increased processing speeds provide engineers with several advantages. They are better able to meet deadlines that improve end user services levels. In organizations that share workstations among several users, faster processing means stations will be more available, improving efficiency. Productivity is also improved with the added throughput.

The added memory of Tesla cards are better able to handle the larger scale problems engineers face. This increased computing power enables more rapid analysis. Running Tesla cards allows engineers to test and compare multiple design concepts before going to prototype at a much more rapid speed than typical GPUs. Users can also draw on larger data sets to develop more alternatives and more detailed solutions.

The growing adoption of Tesla cards promises to have a dramatic impact on the CAD world as users find more ways to leverage the advanced technology.

THE BIG M Convergence

March 24, 2015 By Novastar

THE BIG M is an extraordinary gathering of industry professionals, manufacturers and policymakers with the shared vision of applying our best thinking to our most complex manufacturing challenges. It’s not about starting a discussion – it’s about finding real-world solutions by harnessing the collective knowledge of manufacturers across industries. That’s why we need you, your boss, your colleagues and business partners to attend. What you’ll get is exclusive access to people and technology that are transforming manufacturing right now.

Novastar Solutions is proud to be a part of this groundbreaking conference. We are at the forefront of Detroit’s resurgence as an economic leader and industry trendsetter and an event of this magnitude is a clear sign that Detroit is a city primed for growth.

Why Detroit? Building on A Legacy of Manufacturing

Detroit is manufacturing. Often referred to as the Renaissance City, there’s no place on earth more ideal for reimagining the future of manufacturing than Detroit. Breakthrough technologies and applications, rigorous customer demands, new industry and policy initiatives all offer unprecedented opportunities for forward-thinking companies.

Novastar Solutions has served Michigan business for the last 15 years and will proudly support the Detroit metropolitan area as the industry continues to evolve.

600,000 Manufacturing Employees
15% of manufacturing workforce employed by Big 3
One of the fastest growing IT sectors in the country
Home to 14 Fortune 500 companies
A critical juncture for the NAFTA corridor

Inspiring a New Age for Manufacturing in Detroit

NovaStar is helping to build a viable revitalized Detroit and events such as THE BIG M conference are vital to showing outside customers and vendors what the area is capable of. With such a uniquely diverse talent pool the Detroit metropolitan area finds itself poised to be a success story in the coming years and Novastar will be there to supply critical hardware, software, and consulting services for all phases from planning to execution.

Our staff has the experience and industry specific insight to provide our customers the tools required to get the job done. We have carefully developed relationships with the leading suppliers in many industries that give us the edge in both pricing and delivery. THE BIG M, and similar events, play a key role in furthering these relationships and allow us to keep our finger on the pulse of business in the area.

JUNE 2-4 2015
COBO CENTER DETROIT

Check out some of the highlights from the Big M Convergence 2015.

Integrating LCA and CAD for Sustainable Product Design

February 21, 2015 By Novastar

The concept of sustainability and being environmentally friendly continues to be a focus in the manufacturing industry. It is now commonly accepted that designing products with sustainability in mind is good for the environment, consumers, brands, and business.

While many businesses are striving to be environmentally friendly as a show of corporate responsibility, growing government regulation may make it required. The European Union has made certain product design decisions mandatory, and it will not be long before other countries follow suit. Accounting for these requirements and the negative environmental impact of products can be cumbersome and costly. It is more effective to build sustainability into the product design to prevent negative outcomes when they are already on the market.

To meet this demand, it is imperative that sustainability is built into the product design from the beginning. One way to implement this is through the use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) principles. LCA takes into account the entire life of a product into account, such as material selection, manufacturing processes, product use, energy consumption, transportation, and end of life issues. Reviewing product design at this level, LCA assists designers in assessing product development. Ultimately, this helps them make environmentally friendly decisions.

LCA Challenges
Despite being a powerful enabler in environmentally friendly design, integrating CAD/CAE with LCA presents challenges. The most serious challenge is the fact that there is a significant difference between the two. CAD/CAE is an iterative process, while LCA is an evaluation technique.

Product specifications and other factors continually evolve during the design phase; evaluating this moving target can be difficult. Therefore, LCA review is not as effective in the early stages of design. It is most effective as the design nears its final iteration. LCA is most beneficial when comparing options at a specific decision point. This is a key factor in achieving sustainability.

Integrating LCA Principles
Sustainable Brands is a learning, collaboration, and commerce community of over 348,000 sustainable business leaders from around the world. They list six requirements for integrating LCA principles into product design:

Initiate design with eco-design principles
Recognize iterative process of design
Allow designers to easily access and aggregate data about the impact of materials
Provide sufficient accuracy to make LCA information useful
Store collective design knowledge and make it universally available
Incorporate costs associated with alternate designs

Integrating LCA into the basic CAD/CAE design process is not easy, but striving to do so is critical if we hope to reduce the environmental footprint of products that are being created.

Four Disadvantages of Seat Sharing for CAD/CAE

February 15, 2015 By Novastar

With an uncertain economy and competitive environment, every company is focused on the bottom line. Publicly traded companies have the additional pressure from Wall Street to produce positive short term results.

One of the biggest victims of cost reduction is the acquisition of new and value added assets. Critical systems that are necessary are typically accounted for, but it can be more difficult to obtain funding for hardware or software that fulfills long term needs.

This is applicable to requests for up-to-date CAD software and engineering workstations. Developers who use this technology understand the need to make these investments. However, tight budgets may lead to resistance in upgrading; administrators see an expense they would rather avoid. This results in a lack of appropriate resources for developers to do their jobs.

As a compromise, a group of developers in a department would share a few machines to get their work done. This practice is known as seat sharing. In theory, this sounds like an efficient use of resources. However, in practice, it can cause a number of problems for companies of any size. Here are four of them.

1. Seat Sharing Causes Diverted Resources

Sharing one or two machines is financially less costly than providing a workstation for each person in a department. What is left out of the equation when evaluating the cost to benefit ratio of buying additional hardware are soft expenses; coordinating how the resource will be shared becomes a new task. Conflicts will arise when multiple developers need to use the same machine. This diverts developers to become production schedulers when their time could be used more wisely.

2. Sharing CAD Equipment Creates Bottlenecks

Multiple developers wanting to use a machine at the same time creates a bottleneck; one developer has to wait while another finishes a task. For example, a developer may need a half an hour to execute a deformative model simulation. If another developer arrives at the workstation shortly after needing it, he or she must wait until the current process is complete. This downtime affects the overall schedule of a project as the next step of the design process is halted until the bottleneck is resolved. In a just-in-time design environment, these delays can have a serious impact on a business.

3. There is a Significant Loss in Productivity

In some cases, developers will resolve conflicts by stopping their jobs to allow another person to access a workstation. This not only stops the current workflow, but it may also interrupt a job in process that could result in a simulation being accidentally canceled or crashed. This causes another hidden cost: rework. It is difficult to measure or track the impact that rework creates when an incident occurs.

4. Seat Sharing Can Lower Employee Morale

Scheduling conflicts can be resolved by forcing developers to change shifts to spread out the demand on a workstation. This may seem like a reasonable solution to management, but asking people to work second and third shifts can cause resentment and a drop in morale. This may lead to developers leaving a job rather than work off-hour shifts.

There’s no question that businesses must be smart and creative when establishing their budgets. While seat sharing may look like a reasonable solution, the costs in productivity loss, rework, and lowered morale end up being more expensive than the lowered capital cost of purchasing less workstations. Taking this into account, seat sharing may not be the best choice.

Three Concerns of 3D Printing

January 17, 2015 By Novastar

Disruptive technology is the center of discussion for innovation. For example, Apple established the smartphone industry with the iPhone and Dell revolutionized PCs with build to order manufacturing. These innovations provided significant advantages and are viewed as positive developments.

The same is true for 3D printing, which is disrupting the mass production manufacturing industry as it emerges. Products can be built as one off productions or in small batches. This can result in lower costs, decreased time to market, and an increase in mass customization. Although there are many benefits to 3D printing, this emerging technology has also raised concerns that need to be addressed. Here are three of them.

Legal Issues

As more small companies and individuals acquire the capability to produce products with 3D printers, liability concerns arise. For example, large manufacturers of helmets and toys are strictly regulated in the United States. However, it is difficult to extend these controls to small scale production. The standard of produced materials is currently not well observed.

Intellectual property is also a legal concern. Designs and programs for creating 3D products can be copyrighted, but the lines of ownership are blurred with a growing number of micro manufacturers who do not verify if a model is owned by someone.

Piracy problems are expected to grow, as there is a low barrier to acquire a 3D printer and to use a copyrighted model. Knockoffs of popular products can easily be made with 3D manufacturing. A recent report from the Institute for National Strategic Studies states that it is important that entrepreneurs are legally protected and that their intellectual property is protected abroad in reference to 3D printing.

Security Issues

Unfortunately, new technology will always be used by those with malicious intent. For example, plastic guns can be made that are undetectable by metal detectors. ATM card skimmers, a widget that reads your credit card information as you withdraw from an ATM, have been produced to gain access to bank accounts.

Another concern with 3D technology is that it enables a greater number of companies and individuals to enter the manufacturing industry. This allows proprietary corporate and government intellectual property more accessible, increasing the chances that this sensitive information will be leaked or pirated.

Environmental Impact

While the flexibility of 3D technology allows smaller production runs with less waste, there are some adverse environmental consequences as well.

Current 3D printers consume a lot of energy, some using up to twice as much energy as conventional injection molds. Smaller manufacturers using this technology may lack sufficient air quality controls; unhealthy emissions can then be a concern. Also, as producing small batches of products is so cost effective, disposal of unused prototypes could increase and a consequence of “design fatigue.”

Although there are concerns that arise from the growth of 3D printing, they should not be a reason to slow the development of the technology. Overall, the benefits of 3D printing outweigh the consequences. As with all new technologies, vigilance should be used to ensure 3D printing is used with good intent.

Additive Manufacturing Opens Exciting Opportunities

December 21, 2014 By Novastar

3D printing has generated buzz in the manufacturing world, specifically with prototyping. The term “Additive Manufacturing” is being adopted in the industry, as it describes the production technique of building from the bottom up rather than shaping an existing piece of material. Additive Manufacturing creates products by layering and allows using a wide range of materials to build models. The process is developing rapidly, as methods that were not possible a year ago can now be accomplished.

Multiple Material Use

An advantage of Additive Manufacturing is the ability to use multiple materials in the construction of a model. The last eight months has shown breakthroughs in the use of alternative materials. For example, the cost, appearance, flexibility, and turnaround of models using metals in 3D printing has vastly improved over what was possible a year ago. Material options now include various plastics, polymers, sub polymers, and organic materials. Using edible materials to build food is now a possibility, such as building a customized cake.

In-house metal fabrication is now possible with Additive Manufacturing. A plastic prototyped model can now be coated with metal through a nano-scale electrolysis process. An electromagnet coupled with a depositing tip allows the metal to be assembled droplet by droplet. Inserting metal into a carved plastic model is no longer necessary to incorporate a mixture of materials; an entire prototype can be built from the ground up using all necessary materials.

Since Additive Manufacturing constructs a model one layer at a time, a model can now be made that would be difficult or impossible to make using traditional manufacturing methods. It is now possible to enclose one type of material in another. Voids inside of material can also be made as well.

Multiple Color Options

Until recently, using multiple colors in 3D printing involved swapping out spools, as machines could only hold from one to three colors. By combining various colors with a white polymer, it is now possible to use the entire color palette. This is similar to how an ink jet printer can produce the whole color spectrum from three colors.

Material costs are significantly reduced when a white polymer can be colored on demand, as it is no longer necessary to have an inventory of spools for each color that you would like to use. This allows staff and clients to be more creative in their prototyping.

The recent advancements of Additive Manufacturing have increased the value it can add to a business; it can help you remain competitive and respond to your market. Have you considered using Additive Manufacturing? Does Additive Manufacturing have an application for your business?