Coffee roasting machine builder takes Autodesk prototyping award

The company used Inventor 3D CAD/CAM software to design and manufacture its machines, using digital prototyping to create an accurate 3D model to streamline its design-to-manufacturing process. Boyd Guildner, cofounder and president of Ponderosa, cites a custom, 15kg roaster designed and built in just four weeks – a process that would have taken nearly six months. “We wouldn’t have been able to create such an advanced roaster without Inventor,” he says. “Inventor allowed us to think outside the box and explore multiple roaster designs before cutting a single piece of metal.” Inventor software’s digital prototypes and sheet metal tools enabled Ponderosa to combine manufacturing information, such as punch tool parameters and custom bend tables, with an accurate 3D model of sheet metal folding. In addition, the software made it easy to check for interferences between assembly parts, helping to catch potential errors before the design reached the manufacturing floor.