Protolabs Middleburn chainring
Middleburn chainring manufactured by Protolabs.
Protolabs is to begin providing ‘secondary services’, including the immediate availability of detailed measurement and inspection reporting, in addition to its rapid manufacturing offering across Europe.
The company will also introduce additional secondary operations, such as surface treatment and assembly, later this year.
Protolabs' secondary services have been launched to bring more of the ancillary, post-production processes involved in manufacturing parts in-house, rather than leaving the customer to manage them independently once the part is delivered. The additional measurement and inspection services supplement the standard manufacturing process carried out by Protolabs to better meet customer demand for customisation and cost-efficiency.
Through its standard service offering, Protolabs typically undertakes X, Y, Z measurements at the start of the production run and at final inspection, but the additional services will seek to measure and inspect relative to the customer’s specific requirements of each part. The company expects companies within industries that use First Article Inspection (FAI), Initial Sample Inspection Report (ISIR) and Product Part Approval Process (PPAP), like the aerospace and automotive sectors, will be the most applicable to the new services. The enhanced measurements and inspection services will provide detailed reports using a coordinate measurement machine (CMM) on all part dimensions, or specific dimensions requested by customers. These reports support requirements for ISIR, FAI and PPAP, where an additional document package is required to support the measurement report, including process maps, FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis), control plans and other documents.
“Our customers really value our rapid manufacturing services for low-volume parts and prototypes, but they now want the benefit of On-Demand manufacturing for production parts, which have higher expectations for sampling, measurement and process documentation,” commented Stephen Dyson, Protolabs’ Special Operations Manager. “The marked increase from customers across all industries wanting to take advantage of the speed and flexibility of On-Demand manufacturing, utilising 3D printing, CNC machining and injection moulding techniques, brings with it a desire to simplify the supply chain. We are offering secondary services to reduce the number of process steps that the customer has to manage, saving time and resources in the process.”