Tooling & Production

Fast Design Work Plus Prototyping Equals Success for Jacobs Associates

Designing products and producing prototypes are demanding tasks driven by the clock. Software or equipment that speeds this work up are essential to make a company successful. Using this combination, Jacobs Associates has found the key to success.

Started in 1995, Jacobs Associates in Newington , CT specializes in product design, prototyping, and CAD training for companies that don’t have the resources for this work in-house. Their ten employees offer quality engineering services to a diverse spectrum of industries. These experts, most of whom are mechanical engineers along with two manufacturing engineers, will take a project from concept to drawings and solid models, and then on to production parts. If physical models are required, they will prototype a design to meet their customer’s form, fit, and function requirements.

To keep speed on their side, Jacobs uses the latest software and equipment such as fused deposition modeling (FDM), stereolithography, vacuum casting, the latest CAD/CAM software, injection molding, and prototype assembly.

As with all design and prototype work, part volumes are low, often only one or two being produced. But even though these parts are produced in small quantities (usually for testing), they are still critical in form, function, and tolerances. Parts produced by Jacobs are used in the automotive, cosmetic, medical, industrial, and consumer industries. Jacobs does everything from plastic injection molded parts, used as prototypes, to CNC-machined ones. They even build their own injection molds in-house. For their CAM work, the company uses Mastercam to quickly program their machine tools for general machining and intricate surfacing work.

As co-owner Fred Krol explains, “We utilize Mastercam to turn around our prototype and low-production parts quickly on three-axis vertical machining centers. We machine many of the parts to tight tolerances and offer quick turnaround. The big draw for us to use Mastercam is to easily program our machines for these low-volume complex parts.”

Krol added that they primarily use SolidWorks and Pro/Engineer software packages for their CAD work. He remarked that these software packages integrate very well with Mastercam, and their files can be easily read by the programs. By moving these files from CAD into Mastercam they are able to get “some real beautiful surfaces to work from to generate a toolpath,” he said. “A lot of work we do is surface related, or there’s a lot of surface machining going on. Mastercam handles these complex surfaces extremely well. That’s where we save a lot of time, because of Mastercam’s capabilities.”

Krol added that just about every project they do requires some intricate surfacing. When producing consumer cosmetic parts, he explained, “we have cases and lipstick tubes that go from squares into circles and the blend of the surfaces is complex, but Mastercam handles it exceedingly well.”

Building plastic injection molds in-house is also very demanding work for Jacobs. They tend to do quick-turnaround injection molds and use Mastercam for all the mold programming. Krol commented that for their consumer product molds, they are getting into extremely fine surface work. “Everybody wants all these neat looking contoured surfaces. Nothing is really geometric, it’s all organic. Mastercam’s programming tools are the best around for this work,” he added.

Because Jacobs has such diverse product programming needs, sometimes they run into a challenge, but Krol remarked that Mastercam solves every problem. “Let me put it this way,” he noted. “We’ve taken on ultra-complex parts that I’ve shown to other companies to see if they wanted to do the work, because we were overloaded. They just marveled and wondered how to program it. We tend to take on the tough parts. That’s really the key that Mastercam gives us, allowing us to not be afraid to take on any part. It’s very important for us to be able to program these parts quickly to get any profit out of the job. You only have two pieces. So you’re not going to make millions of them and earn a lot of money on volume. We’ve got to take that piece, program it really fast, and get it out quick. This is the key to our prototyping.”

Another Mastercam feature that’s very important to Krol is its ability to verify a cut part and the time it takes to accomplish it. “We use the verification that’s in Mastercam itself, which actually was one of the selling points when I bought it,” he remarked. “This is an excellent feature, because with the work that we’re doing, I always run verification to see exactly how the part is going to be cut. It shows us precisely the kind of cut, and if there’s going to be any tools that are punching in. It’s very important when we’re cutting expensive materials, and it allows us to get it right the first time.”

Jacobs looked at other CAM software packages. However, he said, “the biggest draw for Mastercam was it seemed that more people were using it, and since we’re in the engineering consulting business, we have to deal with customer files that go back and forth. It seemed to be industry-wide that Mastercam was being used more than any other product available.”

Recently, Krol has been doing some work for automotive shops producing high airflow intake ports for engine heads. The more air the port allows in, the more horsepower they can make or obtain better fuel mileage. This is extremely complicated work that requires seeing the port not as a single diameter tube. Port diameters and surfaces change to get maximum air flow. Software for programming the machine tool and getting the proper surfaces is extremely important.

Even though Jacob’s engineers are designing products, they still know how to use the Mastercam software. They’ll take a part and generate toolpaths with it. They are not only designing, but programming too. To do this, the software has to be easy to use. Krol notes, “Mastercam is pretty easy to use. I would say it’s very intuitive. Maybe it’s because I’ve had a lot of software experience before, but I only had 1 day of training and was off and running that evening.”

Krol adds, “Some of the advanced capabilities of the software could take longer to learn, but it’s all pretty much ready to go. Mastercam is very well documented with their tutorials, which helps you get started even quicker. A lot of help is available, which is extremely nice because some packages make it hard for you to run. You take a training course, and you’re inundated with a lot of information you just learned. Then a couple of weeks down the road, you need to program a part, but you don’t remember how.”

Jacobs’ customers vary from local to worldwide. For their FDM work, they have worldwide clients. “We have an automated system where clients send us their files via the Web, and we’ll make the part, and overnight it out the next day or a couple of days later. This work is worldwide. But for engineering work and prototypes via CNC and injection molding, our clients are pretty much in the New England area,” said Krol.

Mastercam has given Jacobs the ability to solve tough programming problems along with taking on ultra-complex parts that few other companies even want to attempt to machine. It’s also allowed them to make a profit on their work, especially when they produce prototypes. As Krol said, “We’ve got to take that piece, program it really fast, and get it out quick. Therefore, Mastercam is the key to our prototyping business.”