In this cross-industry collaboration between Northumbrian Water Group (NWG) and the Autodesk Technology Centre in Birmingham, England, we're solving the challenges NWG has maintaining water infrastructure. By employing advanced manufacturing techniques—such as laser scanning, reverse engineering, and hybrid manufacturing—NWG can work with its supply chain to repair broken parts and extend the operating lives of the assets they maintain. NWG is responsible for many assets that were manufactured decades ago, and the original design data is no longer available, causing excessively long lead times for replacement parts. As a result, the downtime for key national infrastructure water systems is prolonged and costly. We will show how this important collaboration between the water and manufacturing industries will reduce the downtime and extend product life, improving NWG's resilience, and ultimately saving money for customers.

In today’s market, more and more parts are needing faster turnaround times at lower costs. Multitasking machines help you complete a part in a single operation while reducing your setup times. In this class, we will start with the history of Mazak as an organization and how it created the multitasking machine market. We will cover the different architectures available in the industry and each of their benefits and shortcomings. From a functionality standpoint, we will discuss different types of synchronization, the reasoning behind each one, and their best-case uses. By showcasing some examples through case studies, we aim to highlight the higher-value work customers can obtain by utilizing these types of machine to their full potentials. Finally, we will look to the future and the use of hybrid multitasking machines.

The US Sailing Team is looking to regain its position atop the sailing world rankings in the 2020 Olympic Games. Autodesk’s vision for the Future of Making Things directly aligns with the Team’s strategy for winning gold. We require a streamlined workflow to design, simulate, and manufacture advanced composite components to achieve novel mechanical properties, decrease weight, and improve overall vessel performance—all within the tight dictates of Olympic competition rules. Join us in this course to understand how innovation is achieved among Olympic sailing competitors and how we are capitalizing on Autodesk’s diverse and connected portfolio to become Olympic medal winners.

Composite materials like carbon fiber and fiber glass pose a stronger and lighter alternative to traditional materials. These materials have changed the aerospace industry for more than 30 years and are making their way into automotive, construction, and consumer goods markets. However, not many designers and manufacturers have the knowledge or skill required to produce parts with these materials. This course will exhibit how software solutions are bringing the skills gap down, letting more product designers capitalize on advanced materials. We will walk through designing a composite part, analyzing its ability to be manufactured, generating data for the manufacturing process, and demonstrating some of the manufacturing techniques live in this course.

Companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic all have something in common: disruption of the space travel and space cargo industries. How we ship things and people to outer space is a complex set of operations, and each of these companies is looking to do it cheaper, and, more importantly, lighter than anyone else. By shedding weight, the teams of engineers working on these spacecraft are also making space travel and shipping more attainable. In turn, their suppliers are also looking to adopt composite materials and manufacturing processes to ensure that all of the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have the parts they need, when they need them. In this class, we'll review how, with Autodesk software, you can learn how to make composite parts that may soon be in orbit.

This class will present both techniques and actual working methods and workflows used by end-user companies utilizing Inventor software with customized toolsets. The creation of architectural content, furniture, cabinetry, millwork, doors, windows, trade show booths, stairs, store fixtures, and interiors for boats, planes, and tour buses are just a few of the industries utilizing the software today. This class will emphasize actual construction procedures using the latest version of Inventor software and several core development tools. The presentation of multiple approaches to shortening cycle time to manufacturing is the key in increasing accuracy as well as time to manufacturing. One-button CNC can be a reality. If 25% or more of your design is utilizing wood products, this class will assist you by presenting automated alternatives. The end goal is that designers have more time for creativity, enabling them to work more efficiently and accurately.

Fusion 360 software now offers a simple workflow for programming industrial robot arms. Anyone familiar with post-processing machine code from Fusion 360 can now create robot code in the same way. During this lab, users will use the manufacturing space from Fusion 360 to generate robot native code that can drive industrial robot arms. First, we will show a generic robot workflow within Fusion 360 that will post with the ABB post processor. Then, we will cover exporting code into a virtual robot simulator, ABB RobotStudio, for validation. We’ll then pivot to recordings at Autodesk Technology Centers, explaining calibration of various coordinate systems localizing the robot arm and robot operation for milling applications. We’ll introduce other applications that participants can use with this workflow, such as welding and additive. Finally, we will share various case studies from Autodesk Technology Center residents and customers utilizing Fusion 360 for industrial robots.

University College London at Here East, a new manufacturing center in east London opened in 2018, hosts a new master’s degree in design for manufacture uniquely within a school of architecture. Equipped with industrial robots, computer numerical control (CNC) milling and turning machines for fabrication and structural frames, large-scale metrology, and climate chambers for testing, UCL at Here East strives to cultivate an environment with students at the interface between a design studio and the point of industrial production. How might the well-established methods for manufacturing in automotive and aerospace be used in construction? This session will present an educator’s approach of “model-make-measure,” showing how the course connects students with the properties of materials used to construct buildings and the fabrication processes these materials undergo existing as nominal digital design intent. Examples will show how this approach has suggested novel design outcomes and ways of working, offering skills transferrable to the construction industry.

In this class, we’ll cover four topics of automotive manufacturing: mold simulation and CAM, factory planning, automated manufacturing, and emerging design and manufacturing technology. We’ll begin with the challenges that automotive tooling companies face, and how the use of new technology and increased machine utilization can address the needs of more-complex and accurate tooling. From there we’ll move to factory planning and ways in which to address the challenges that drive change in manufacturing facilities; the problems that arise because of change; and the use of a unified digital model to manage this. We’ll then look at how manufacturing productivity can be increased using intelligent automation, and how it can improve consistency and component reliability. And we’ll finish discussing the use of emerging technology like generative design and additive and hybrid manufacturing, as manufacturers look to improve performance and efficiency of vehicles to meet sustainability and regulatory requirements.

It is common for most sheet metal fabricators to have an ERP (enterprise resource planning) or MRP (material requirements planning) system, as well as software that addresses their needs for nesting and machine programming. What is not commonplace is for those systems to talk to one another very well. This class will present a case study in which the users are designing in Inventor software, managing their revisions and model data in Vault software, using a cloud-based ERP system to input sales and inventory information, and using TruNest to drive all of the machines connected to their sheet metal fabrication operations. What this class will demonstrate to attendees is a fully integrated sheet metal fabrication workflow, from the design of the product to its manufacture on the shop floor.

Meet the Fusion 360 Product Management team and hear about the exciting new features and improvements coming soon.

AutoCAD Electrical software is more than just an electrical schematic design tool. It also includes symbol libraries and functionality for panel layouts, one-line, hydraulic, pneumatic, and piping and instrumentation diagram (P&ID) drawings. Within AutoCAD Electrical, all types of drawings and the included components are linked and update each other automatically. Attend this class to learn the simple requirements for creating the links between drawings and how you can capitalize on this capability to improve your efficiency and the quality of your design package.

Design advancements are exciting and offer solutions previously unthought-of to complex problems. But we can’t forget the manufacturing processes needed to fabricate and eventually implement that new and optimized design. This class will focus on the emerging Generative Design technology in Fusion 360, and multiple ways to manufacture those designs, capitalizing on additive manufacturing, subtractive manufacturing, and a combination of both. The goal will be to explore design and manufacturing workflows to bring this emerging technology into the fold for potential users with varying levels of manufacturing capability. This class will address the workflow from initial generation to final part, focusing on the best practices found along the way.

Learn how to do more with your CNC mill or lathe by utilizing macro programming and probing. Let your machine make decisions and interpret data to make more parts, better! Macro programming lets CNC machine programmers create logic inside of NC programs that use variables and commands to perform actions not otherwise possible with normal G and M codes. In this class, we will go over the basics of NC macro programming (using FANUC G-code) and in-process probing, as well as look at real-world examples that can increase productivity and process reliability. We will show how to integrate these practices within the Fusion 360 CAM environment.

In this talk, we’ll explore the application of hybrid manufacturing to injection mold tools for both modification and repair, demonstrating a circular economy where tools can be modular, reusable, and rapidly modified. Hybrid manufacturing uses machine tools that combine additive and subtractive operations, and provide particular value to the modification and life extension of mold tools. We'll demonstrate a workflow using Autodesk software to (a) identify unwanted features or damage on a mold, (b) capture physical geometric data, (c) program processes to remove and repair features and damage, (d) redeposit material, and (e) machine new features. We'll demonstrate both the digital and physical aspects of the workflow, and aim to present the final physical output—a brand-new injection-molded component, made in the Autodesk Moldflow Laboratory in Kilsyth, Australia. This project is a collaboration between the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Autodesk.

You don't often take an additive part directly from print bed to installation. Tolerance requirements almost always dictate the need for subtractive postmachining to ensure surfaces meet design specs and tolerances. In this class, we'll take a generativity-designed part from design to preparation for hybrid manufacturing. Along the way, we'll explore optimization with generative design, design for manufacturing, and work-holding design, and we'll see how the mechanical design tools, FEA capabilities, and hybrid manufacturing environment in Fusion 360 software can reduce friction and streamline the process from design to manufactured part.

Want to see how you can use Autodesk HSM software for your mill-turn machine? Come to this class, which will be a deep dive into the mill-turn side of Autodesk HSM. We will cover parts ranging from actual programming to postprocessor setup to machine capabilities. This will be a fast-paced class, so at least some Autodesk HSM experience or mill-turn know-how is advisable.