Oreck Uses FDM to Avoid Employee Injury

By Susan Smith

The role of fused deposition modeling broadened at the Oreck Corporation of Cookeville,TN.

Although best known for their lightweight, high end vacuum cleaners, Oreck also makes small appliances, floor machines and air purifiers. For ten years, the company has been using Stratasys FDM Quantum machines to do prototyping, in addition to their CNC machines. Before deciding upon the Stratasys machine, Oreck explored other types of solutions, and then became a beta tester for the first version of the Stratasys FDM Quantum. The reason they initially began looking for an alternative solution to the manual process that was employed, they found that during the fabrication process, employees were getting injured repeatedly by a part that wouldn’t remain stable under a pneumatic screw.

Although the company could have used CNC as an alternative to that process, it would’ve taken a long time and they are also so booked up on CNC time for tooling that it would have not have worked for that department. The solution was to use FDM for the process, eliminating the need for hands-on handling of the parts.

Bill Fish, senior model maker for Oreck Manufacturing Company, said the two Stratasys FDM machines the company owns were used for prototyping a urethane casted part from a master that they had made and the master was machined at that time. Then they put in inserts when the castings were made so they could mount them to the palettes.

Parts for assembly are made using ABS water soluble material, said Fish and the material used for prototyping also simulates the ABS parts they use. “ABS on ABS doesn’t scratch parts. There are some times when it may want to slide on us so what we do is coat the FDM parts with a black rubberized paint and that seems to help hold it in place.”

FDM is used in the design, manufacture and engineering of company products. Fish said the FDM machines are also used to design specialized tools to help assembly. They are also used for templates, like placing a label in a specific spot. “We’ll make a template out of FDM materials so it will locate that label in the proper spot every time.” In the engineering department they use the machines for fixtures for holding a motor to test fans,  and for the coordinate measuring machine to check tolerances for article shots out of a mold.

Fish said their two FDM Quantum machines run 24/7, as they run at their best this way. Oreck is now running three times the number of projects they were running when they had only one machine. He said they can pack the entire envelope of a machine with parts.

According to Joe Hiemenz of Stratasys, the term “fused deposition modeling” does not quite aptly describe all that the machines do. Although they were originally designed for modeling, companies such as Oreck are using them for many more tasks such as engineering and fabrication.

“The only thing limiting the FDM machines is people’s imaginations - they can be used for just about everything,” said Fish.

Stratasys
Minneapolis, MN

Oreck
Cookeville, TN