Overview

Hi, I’m David Busacker, a senior engineering consultant at Stratasys. I’m going to be showing you some awesome applications of the newest release of the FDM fixture generator. Designers spend days designing fixtures that only take hours to 3D print. The FDM fixture generator reduces the cost of designing simple jigs and fixtures.

In 2020, in collaboration with engineering software company nTop, we introduced the first tool, the Assembly Fixture Generator. The Assembly Fixture Generator takes a part file orientation and a height, and automatically creates a simple fixture optimized for FDM printing. We have some other great tutorials showing you the Assembly Fixture applications, but today I’m going to be focusing on the newest module, the Masking Fixture Module.

The Masking Fixture Module adds a lot more applications to the FDM fixture generator. With this newest release, you can now create plugs, masks, and enclosures. Our customers are using these fixtures to protect their parts and ensure quality during painting or coating applications using a variety of FDM materials. So what I’m actually going to do is show you how you can protect a part like the one shown here with this new software tool by Stratasys and nTop. We’ll do a separate software walkthrough with these very same parts on a different video, so you have everything you need to get going today.

Castings are often expensive to manufacture, and it’s common to repair or remanufacture a casting rather than to replace it. It takes a lot of fixturing to remanufacture parts. For example, when a casting first arrives at a remanufacturing facility, it’ll need to be stored before we can do anything else. The Assembly Fixture Module is great for this. We can easily create quick holding fixtures to make sure our castings can be staged for operation. So this way, it’ll be protected from falls and it’ll be even held in a useful way for later operations. You can even add bolt holes or standoffs to secure delicate parts.

Our customers’ new favorite material for sturdy flat fixtures like this is ABS CF10. ABS CF10 is a 10% carbon fiber filled ABS plastic. It’s a great combo of rugged and fast, awesome for rapid fixturing. Now there may be more on this part that we want to protect. For example, the interior of this casting is important, and we want to make sure we don’t get grease or other contaminants inside the housing. We can use the Masking Fixture Module to turn this into a surface enclosure in the software. A surface enclosure takes a surface and encloses any openings in that surface to protect the part interiors from grease, media, paint, etc. To avoid wear and tear on your parts, we recommend a material like Durant.


Duran is a highly lubricious, high-temperature material that will withstand plenty of wear and tear. Another nice option of the Surface Enclosure is the ability to wrap the mask completely around a protected surface. For example, take a look at this kind of exposed feature up here. To make sure the inside and the outside of this feature are protected, we can make a Surface Enclosure that protects the surfaces next to the target surface as well.

Remanufacturing castings usually involves media blasting to clean the casting exterior. That process can damage the interior of a casting, so we need to continue to seal the holes and slots with the Masking Fixture module. On the FDM fixture generator, it’s a two-click operation to plug holes. Just select the interior face and the flush surface and bam, you get a Surface Plug.

Now, plugging cylindrical holes isn’t necessarily difficult in traditional CAD, but managing dozens of plugs at once is much easier in the FDM fixture generator. There are also some great built-in features that our customers requested we build straight into the tool. So for example, you can add a taper to your plug to get the perfect fit, customize the clearance for a slip fit, press fit, or a tapered interference fit. And by the way, if you do opt for a tight fit, you’ll want to make sure you use the built-in grip feature that makes plug removal nice and simple.

Sometimes you’ll want to make a mask for a particular face for a painting or coating operation. Designing exterior masks for complex surfaces like this one can lead to overlapping surfaces and just all kinds of headaches in traditional CAD. With the nTop tool, making what we call surface masks is very simple. Simply grab the surfaces you want to protect, put in some thickness and an optional overhang, and presto, you have a Surface Mask.

Duran or ASA are great materials for a mask like this with an obvious way to install and retain it, but sometimes installing masks can be tricky. So, like with a surface like this, this is where a strong flexible polymer like TPU 992a can come in handy. TPU 992a is an FDM material with great abrasion resistance and lots of flexibility, and it’s awesome for getting into tight spaces like this. It’s also great for enclosures too because it allows you to easily place them into your part like this and tear it out for removal.

Protect your whole part throughout your whole manufacturing process with the powerful combination of Stratasys FDM and nTop. So, add protective bumpers to the edges of your parts to reduce scrap rates, create on-part job aids for shop floor communication and job tracking, or create custom dunnage stacking strategies with contoured standoffs. Honestly, the opportunities are pretty much endless with the latest addition to the Stratasys and nTop FDM fixture generator.