INNOVATION & DESIGN | PARTNER CONTENT
FAST, ON-DEMAND PROTOTYPING Clinton Perry, Marketing Manager at Autodesk, explains how Conturo Prototyping is delivering complex prototypes faster with the Fusion 360 Machining Extension
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t won’t come as a surprise to learn that in a place known as ‘Steel City’ there is high demand for prototypes and machined parts. The city of Pittsburgh’s rich industrial heritage has enabled the region to rise from the deindustrialisation of the mid-20th century, transforming into what is today a thriving hub for engineering and technological advancement with a growing need for rapid, high-quality production. Formed to satisfy the rapid growth in technological demand, Conturo Prototyping started life in 2016 as a 1,000 square foot shop. Despite being small it had a big vision – to become a world-class provider of fast on-demand prototypes and components of superior quality. Conturo Prototyping quickly grew to a 17,000 square foot facility complete with ten multi-axis CNC mills and three CNC lathes, thanks predominantly to its agile manufacturing workflow and engineering customer support.
ABOVE: The Machining Extension offers a number of time saving features such as Steep and Shallow Machining complex parts can be challenging, expensive and time consuming, however, Conturo Prototyping is changing that with the advanced 5-axis CNC machining capabilities provided by the Autodesk Fusion 360 Machining Extension. Specialising in small batch production runs for aerospace, automotive, and medical
OEMs, to help shorten product development times and bring products to market faster, Fusion 360 helps the Conturo Prototyping engineers to simplify design for manufacture, collaborate seamlessly, automate part setup, and program multiple parts per day on their 5-axis CNC machines. “We work with engineers that have very complex goals and make very advanced mechanical assemblies and components,” says Andy Lawniczak, Chief Operating Officer. “But they’re used to the old-school ways of manufacturing and machining. So, when we get back to them within a day with a design for manufacture analysis, they say, ‘Wow, that was fast!’” Staying abreast of the latest software developments plays a significant part in setting Conturo Prototyping aside from traditional competitors. After deploying Fusion 360, the company was able to take advantage of simulation and automation functions that allowed the company to digitise many manual steps, leading to a rapid decrease in product development time. “As soon as the customer comes to us with a problem, we load it in Fusion 360,” Lawniczak adds. “Right away, we can start looking at geometries, measuring different aspects, making slight changes, and putting it in our machines to see how it will fit and how feasible the job is. What’s really important about these advanced tools is we can be so much more agile than we used to be.” A traditional job shop with a few CNC programmers and a large crew of operators might be able to program a handful of parts in a week. Conturo Prototyping, on the other hand, can program that many parts in a single day. From Lawniczak’s perspective, the versatility of Fusion 360
