MX3D Makes 3D-Printed Robotic Arm, Lenovo and AMD Partner for New Workstation, Autodesk Releases Generative Design Extension, More

MX3D Robotic Arm

MX3D, Altair, and ABB collaborated to produce a 3D-printed robotic arm.

The robotic component is a replacement part, but not a replica of the original. Using generative design, the part was redesigned as a much lighter part.

The project shows the promise of generative design and 3D printing to drastically reduce the weight of oversize industrial components, leading to nimbler, lighter machines. The project also shows creative ways to use 3D printing to make parts that are several times larger than the print chamber of typical office 3D printers.

In collaboration with Altair, MX3D produced a much lighter robotic arm with topology optimization. Image courtesy of MX3D, Altair.

Lenovo, AMD Launch ThinkStation P620

This week, Lenovo releases the ThinkStation P620, powered by AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro CPUs.

AMD offers Threadripper processors for general consumer machines, and Threadripper Pro processors for the professional workstation market. In AMD and Lenovo’s words, the P620 is "the world’s first 64-core workstation."

The P620 is part of Lenovo’s ThinkStation product line, ranging from the small form factor P340 Tiny to the expandable desktop tower P920.

You can configure the P620 with two NVIDIA Quadro RTX 8000 or four NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000.

AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper Pro CPUs compete with Intel Xeon CPUs, both seeking to attract OEM integration.

The Lenovo P640 comes with PCIe Gen 4, with up to 1TB memory. It is set to become available in this fall.

Leonvo and AMD team up to release the ThinkStation P620, powered by AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro processors. (Image courtesy of Lenovo.)

Autodesk adds Generative Design to Fusion 360

Autodesk recently added a generative design extension to Fusion 360 offerings, allowing users to run topology optimization and lightweighting options from the software itself.

This comes as a subscription option, $4,000 per year—added on to the Fusion 360 subscription.

Lightweighting or topology optimization is gaining ground in automotive and aerospace, because lighter vehicles generally offer better fuel economy and aerodynamics.

Generative design is one of the ways you can explore a variety of lightweight design options, using materials and geometric parameters as input.

Onshape Education Enterprise

PTC recently began offering Onshape Education Enterprise for schools, universities, and educational institutions with the need to organize and manage their Onshape licenses. 

The Education Enterprise version comes with usage analytics and reporting features. The software is modeled on Onshape Enterprise, meant for large corporations implementing Onshape CAD among its users.