Designfax weekly eMagazine

Subscribe Today!

Archives

View Archives

Partners

Manufacturing Center
Product Spotlight

Modern Applications News
Metalworking Ideas For
Today's Job Shops

Tooling and Production
Strategies for large
metalworking plants

Southco access hardware in rail applications

Discover how Southco's rail access hardware solutions help improve safety, reliability, and operational efficiency across modern rail networks. The video showcases a range of rail applications where Southco's access hardware plays a critical role, including driver cabins, lighting systems, tray tables, headrests, armrests, and other passenger and operator touchpoints. Designed to support dependable performance in demanding moving environments, Southco's solutions help operators streamline maintenance processes, minimize downtime, and enable more proactive asset management.
View the video.

Multi-zone tension leveler for hard-to-flatten alloys

Redex USA's Levelflex^® is a modular, multi-zone tension leveler engineered for continuous processing lines, including coating and heat treatment of aluminum alloys and where flatness is critical to coating adhesion and downstream formability. By stretching material within 95% of its yield strength, it corrects stubborn flatness defects in fewer passes. It comes in open-loop pure stretch or closed-loop tension measurement modes to optimize surface integrity and eliminate crossbow.
Learn more.

Hold any shape with ID and OD Form Holding Clamps

These simple OD and ID clamping solutions from Fixtureworks clamp onto your part in one easy operation, eliminating the need for custom fixtures. They allow users to clamp onto the inner or outer diameter of small-size, irregularly shaped work parts fast. Lots of options.
Learn more.

Need inserts? We make it E-Z.

Founded in 1956, E-Z LOK allows users to repair damaged or worn-out threads without the need for special taps or installation tools. Our line of threaded locking inserts is used in metal, plastic, wood, composite, and additive industries. Extensive inventories are maintained in four warehouses across the U.S., and all products are sold through industrial distributors. One source for all your needs!
Learn more
or contact Kyle Lindsly-Roach for free samples at 310.323.5613 x221.

Stop paying the 'assembly tax': Why your next design should be one part not 10

"As metal additive manufacturing (AM) moves from the prototyping lab to mainline production, the most significant ROI isn't found in making parts faster, it's found in making fewer of them." So says Erica Manzella of Go Engineer. Learn about the hidden costs of traditional assembly, the DfAM toolset native to SOLIDWORKS, and the advanced 3DEXPERIENCE optimization tools and industrial metal AM hardware that are making monolithic design a physical reality.
Read the GoEngineer blog.

Best-seller: Copper filament for 3D printing

Virtual Foundry, the company that brought us 3D-printable lunar regolith simulant, says Copper Filamet™ (not a typo) is its best-selling metal filament. This material is compatible with any open-architecture FDM/FFF 3D printer. After sintering, final parts are 100% pure copper. The company says this is one of the easiest materials to print and sinter. Stainless steel, porcelain, aluminum, and titanium available too.
Learn more and get all the specs.

What can replace a coil spring? You've got better options!

Traditional coil springs can limit mechanical designs. Wave springs offer a space-saving alternative, providing equivalent force and deflection in up to half the operating height while reducing assembly size and weight. There are four wave spring types that can replace a coil spring. Learn how each variant delivers unique performance capabilities to optimize space, efficiency, and reliability.
Read this informative NEW Smalley technical article.

Next-gen metal bonding: 3M Scotch-Weld 8500 Series

Replace traditional fasteners and streamline assembly with 3M Scotch-Weld Acrylic Adhesive DP8507NS. Engineered for direct bonding to bare or slightly oily metals with minimal surface prep, this high-performance adhesive withstands paint bake cycles up to 200 C (392 F), resists corrosion, and holds strong down to -40 C. Upgrade durability, aesthetics, and design flexibility. Bonds many plastics too!
View the video.

3 things you need to get right when 3D printing gears

When businesses decide to 3D print their own gears, they can reduce lead times and costs associated with replacements, prototypes, and small-batch production runs significantly. According to the experts at igus, however, "achieving industrial-grade reliability requires more than just a digital file; there are several fundamental technical basics you must master first to ensure your gears can withstand the rigors of real-world use."
Read this informative igus tech tip.

DURACON polymer with 30% recycled content

Daicel Corporation's High Performance Polymers SBU has launched four new DURACON^® POM grades featuring 30% post-consumer recycled (PCR) content. Unveiled at CHINAPLAS 2026, the lineup includes Standard, Low VOC, Sliding, and Tough options. Leveraging advanced compounding expertise, Daicel maintains quality and mechanical performance comparable to standard virgin resin grades for demanding global industrial and automotive components.
Learn more.

Renishaw unveils revolutionary LIBERTAS™ 3DP tech

Renishaw's new LIBERTAS software technology addresses two of the most persistent challenges in metal AM: poor downskin surface finish and the need for support structures. Users have greater freedom to manufacture complex geometries.
Read the full article.

Innovate like a PRO: Protolabs' new AI-enabled manufacturing platform

ProDesk by Protolabs accelerates innovation for product development and procurement teams. It features real-time, AI-powered quoting with design for manufacturability (DFM) analysis across injection molding, CNC machining, and 3D printing. The platform enables seamless team collaboration and customizes quotes with instant feedback on materials, lead times, secondary operations, and finishes prior to production.
Learn more.

SDP/SI Shaftloc Fastening System

Shaftloc is a unique, reusable locking device for securely mounting mechanical components like gears and sprockets onto shafts without the need for keyways, set screws, or adhesives. Its simple, two-piece design offers a cost-effective alternative to traditional fasteners, providing high clamping force and vibration resistance. Installed with standard tools, Shaftloc is perfect for designers seeking flexible, hubless mounting solutions. Available in four styles.
Learn more from SDP/SI.

How Autodesk Research uses Markforged 3D printing

In advanced R&D, "good enough" doesn't cut it. To pioneer its Performance-Aided Design (PAD) workflow, Autodesk Research partnered with Markforged to close the gap between digital simulation and reality. Using sensors and digital twins, PAD replaces delayed field reports with real-time feedback. To test this high-stakes system, Autodesk built massive UAV platforms -- including a 300-lb aircraft. Facing extreme dynamic loads and weather, these drones provide the ultimate torture test for rapid design iteration.
View the video.

Top Tech Tip: How do you 3D print STL files?

Learn the basics of 3D printing STL files -- the files that serve as the digital foundation for 3D printing -- and a whole lot more from the experts at Xometry. These files have advantages, of course, but did you know they have disadvantages too? Also learn about STL tools and programs, and how to reduce file size or even repair a file you are having trouble with.
Read the Xometry article.

Weird science: Scientists create a magnet with almost no magnetic field -- say it is incredibly useful

An international research team led by the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) has developed a new magnetic material that features a stable internal magnetic structure, almost no external magnetic field, and retains these properties above room temperature.

These characteristics may be important for future generations of electronic technologies, for example within fields where magnetic properties are used instead of electrical charge to process information -- so-called spintronics. The results have been published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Chemistry.

The material belongs to a rare class known as compensated ferrimagnets. In such materials, the magnetic moments inside the structure point in different directions. Internally, magnetism is very strong, but the magnetic moments almost cancel each other out. As a result, the material exhibits only a very weak external magnetic field. This sets it apart from conventional magnets, which generate unwanted magnetic interference or "noise" that makes them difficult to integrate into electronic circuits.

"We now have a material with a very well-ordered magnetic structure, but without the magnetic field that usually causes problems in electronics," says Professor Kasper Steen Pedersen from DTU Chemistry, who led the development of the new material in collaboration with researchers from DTU Chemistry, the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (France), Institut Laue-Langevin (France), the University of Copenhagen, Jagiellonian University (Poland), and Universidad Andres Bello (Chile).

Less disruptive magnetism
In today's electronic components, information is mainly carried by electrical charge. In spintronics, by contrast, information is carried by the spin of electrons, which in principle can enable faster components and significantly lower energy consumption. One of the major challenges addressed by the researchers behind the present study has been the need for magnetic materials that do not simultaneously disturb their surroundings.

"Magnetic materials are difficult to work with when you want to pack many functions closely together, but when a material emits almost no magnetic field, it becomes possible, in principle, to place components much closer together without unwanted interference," says Steen Pedersen. "This opens an entirely new level of control. When magnetism is embedded in a molecular material, we can use chemistry to tune both magnetic and electronic properties."

The new material is built as a metal-organic network in which metallic centers are connected by organic molecules. This molecular structure makes it possible to design and adjust the material's properties chemically. This approach differs from the metal alloys and oxides that currently dominate magnetic electronics.

This illustration shows the structure of the new material Cr(pyrazine)₃, in which chromium atoms (purple) are connected in a regular three-dimensional network by organic pyrazine molecules including nitrogen (blue) and carbon (grey). The structure repeats uniformly in all directions, forming a symmetric crystalline lattice. This regular and uniform structure underpins the stability and consistency of the material's magnetic properties throughout the crystal. [Credit: Illustration courtesy of the researchers/DTU]

More specifically, the material consists of chromium atoms linked by the organic molecule pyrazine, which is well suited for binding metal atoms together. In this case, the pyrazine occurs as a radical with one unpaired electron, allowing it to contribute directly to the material's magnetism.

Fundamental research with wide-ranging potential
Experiments show that the near-perfect magnetic compensation remains stable over a wide temperature range and persists well above room temperature. This makes the material particularly interesting, as almost all related materials only exhibit such a balance at specific temperatures. As a result, the new material may potentially be applicable in a much broader range of contexts.

The researchers emphasize that the work represents fundamental research and that the material's functionality has not yet been tested in concrete components or for any specific application. Nevertheless, the technological perspective of the discovery is clear.

"We have not created a finished technology, but we have shown that it is possible to achieve a combination of properties that many researchers have been looking for over many years," says Steen Pedersen. "That makes the material interesting as a platform for future development."

The next step will be to investigate whether the material can be chemically tuned toward other properties such as electrical conductivity, and whether it can be fabricated as thin films suitable for integration into electronic components.

Source: Technical University of Denmark

Published April 2026

Rate this article