Epson Expands Use of PTC CoCreate to Large-Format Printers

By DE Editors

PTC has announced that Seiko Epson Corporation, a manufacturer of information-related equipment, electronic devices and precision products, has expanded the use of CoCreate to the development of its large format printers (LFPs), including its newest models, the Epson Stylus Pro 9700 and 7700 high-speed, large-format, 4-color inkjet printers.

Having originally implemented CoCreate for design in its consumer inkjet printer division, Epson also now uses CoCreate to design and develop all its large-size enterprise printers. Using CoCreate across divisions allows for greater design flexibility and efficiency, according to the company. Existing designs can be modified to meet tight development schedules and bring products to market fast. Epson’s product is well suited for the explicit modeling approach of CoCreate, allowing designers to directly modify model geometry, leading to shorter development cycles, improved productivity and reduced costs, PTC says. The new Epson Stylus Pro 9700/ 7700 printers were designed in 12 weeks.

Epson uses CoCreate Model Manager for product data management in team projects. Before implementing CoCreate Model Manager, each engineer stored his or her own design and part data, either locally or on a server, making it difficult for the team to know which versions were current. Now, current design data is shared with the product development team across all products.

"Creating and modifying our 3D CAD data with CoCreate provides us the flexibility and speed that is essential to the success of our daily product development process,” says Kiyoto Komuro, director, Epson LFP Planning Design Department. “CoCreate is so easy to learn that new designers need very little formal training, enabling them to become productive very quickly. This flexibility vastly improves our speed. No doubt, CoCreate will play an increasingly important role in the design of unique products that must be brought to market quickly.”

For more information, visit Epson and PTC.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company's website.