Using CAD and 3D printing in stillage manufacturing
Using computer aided design solutions in the development, creation, and manufacturing of stillages is a powerful way to maximise the quality of each product, ensuring longevity and cost-effectiveness of each stillage.
The CAD software used to produce our bespoke designs allows Bluestar to provide drawings and 3D models for our customers, and for our production team. These designs act as a home for key characteristic information, including necessary details such as stillage stencilling, label holders and required stickers.
I've collaborated with Bluestar on several transport and storage solutions and the designs are exceptional. They optimise storage capacity while prioritising safety and product accessibility.
Trusted by companies all across the UK
Benefits of using CAD for stillage design
Utilising a high level of customisation in the stillage design process has a variety of benefits for business operations:
Optimised functionality
Having the ability to tailor your stillage to specific needs means that you can increase storage capacity while improving protection of products. Using CAD software to create virtual models ensures that your stillage perfectly accommodates various sizes, weights and shape of different components.
Improved safety
Using CAD can help to bring a high level of safety compliance to your manufacturing environment. Customised design of stillages helps you to factor in a range of safety requirements and regulations from the offset. This ensures a rapid integration of your stillage into your business processes.
Efficient space
Standard, off-the-shelf stillages will never utilise as much space in a lorry or warehouse as fully bespoke stillages. Custom and tailored products always create opportunities in your manufacturing facilities. Full custom designed stillages allow precise measurements and configurations to maximise different industrial spaces.
Benefits of using 3D printing for stillage design
A myriad of benefits are on show to businesses which use 3D printing in their stillage design process:
Quick prototyping
3D printing helps Bluestar in creating mouldings to work with for prototypes, this moulding technique can help to reduce the lead time of prototypes. This gives the utmost opportunity for functionality and fit optimisation before committing to final production.
Complexity simplified
Printing 3D and models help to minimise the associated complexity of creating unique geometries. The alternative to using 3D modelling would be to use traditional manufacturing techniques which would be intricacies difficult or impossible to produce.
Low weight materials
We use 3D printing to create the moulds for our stillage designs. This process enables us to design hollow structures, which helps reduce the weight of the final product while preserving its strength. By incorporating these lightweight, hollow features, we can enhance the overall efficiency and performance of the stillage.
Read our case studies
Here, we showcase how businesses from diverse industries have leveraged our services to achieve remarkable production results.
Focusing on maximising transportation space, we created a 3D model of a large articulated lorry loaded with our fully custom stillages.
This showed JCB how our products help to increase the amount of room in a lorry and how to help reduce the number of trips needed to carry the same amount of parts.
We work on providing cutting edge transport and storage solutions for automotive giants McLaren.
Taking advantage of our polyurethane moulding department, McLaren specify a variety of different measurements via thorough designs.
We take these and provide a fully bespoke output featuring the highest-quality materials and levels of production.
Lotus supplied us with CAD data for parts to be stored in one of our bespoke stillages. We designed a fully customised solution around the CAD drawings.
Taking this brief, we’ve completed thorough drawings and designed how the stillage will look.
With prototypes provided and approval secured, the bespoke stillages have revolutionised both transport and storage for Lotus.
Our Services
We craft each bespoke stillage and post pallet with precision to accommodate your unique storage requirements. This removes wasted space and improves your storage.
When we refer to our stillages, what is the meaning of a Bluestar Stillage? Stillages are
strong storage and transport solutions.
When it comes to efficient storage and transportation solutions, stillages stand as a silent backbone of many industries.
