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SimSpray Supports Award Winning Fabricator – Rapid Sheet Metal

We’re honored to see how SimSpray plays a part in supporting The FABRICATOR’s Industry Award winner Rapid. “Nobody wants anything slower these days.” David Puleo, Rapid’s director of sheet metal says. At VRSim, we echo the belief about training.

SimSpray is designed to support faster, better training. Training with SimSpray includes a library of lessons and activities covering basic and advanced part geometries, common pitfalls and defects, and intricacies like Faraday effects. “This gives you the ability to get immediate feedback in a realistic environment.” Guy Pederzani, Rapid’s senior engineering supervisor, said.

Maximizing work flow for an on-demand environment

(From left to right) Matt Garrett, David Puleo, Guy Pederzani, Jamie White, and Jim Worth are the leaders of Rapid Manufacturing’s sheet metal team. In early 2018, after a kaizen event to re-examine material usage and storage, Rapid moved to using 40- by 48-in. blanks, that fit perfectly into the company’s IPG laser cutting machines. This move allowed Rapid to move away from pallet-based storage of raw material, and it simplified inventory control. Changes like this helped Rapid earn The FABRICATOR’s 2019 Industry Award. Photos courtesy of Jim Vaiknoras, Wakefield, Mass.

They call it continuous improvement for a reason. There’s always room for improvement—even when your name is Rapid Manufacturing.

Rapid is a $42 million custom sheet metal fabrication and CNC machining company in Nashua, N.H. The company, which is owned by Minnesota-based digital manufacturer Protolabs, was founded by Jay Jacobs in 2001 because he was underwhelmed with the service he got from metal fabricators in the area; he had come from the world of additive manufacturing, where quotes were returned quickly and prototypes could be delivered in days. But when he would try to reach out to sheet metal shops in his role as a manufacturer’s representative, he was promised quotes in a couple of weeks and parts in a four- to six-week time frame.

Since those early days, the company has worked to live up to its name. In doing so, it has added machining capabilities and streamlined its operations, such as by developing eRapid, a free add-in for SolidWorks that allows users to get instant metal quotes within the design software. Turnaround time for sheet metal projects is typically about seven days, with exceptions made for those jobs that require them.

Read more about Rapid’s achievement at The FABRICATOR

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