The votes are in, and Autodesk customer ITAMCO has been named the Autodesk Inventor of the Year for 2014.

Members from the Autodesk Manufacturing community worldwide selected ITAMCO from among the dozen companies featured as 2014 monthly Autodesk Inventing the Future honorees. For more than eight years, Autodesk has identified innovative customers from among hundreds of thousands of designers and engineers that create using Autodesk manufacturing tools and featured their work via this monthly recognition.

Based in Plymouth, IN, ITAMCO delivers precision-machined components to original equipment manufacturers that serve a wide array of industries – ranging from oil and gas and renewable energy, to mining and construction and aerospace and defense. Autodesk Inventor 3D design software, as part of Autodesk Product Design Suite and Autodesk Factory Design Suite, are among the many tools ITAMCO leverages to better serve its customers.

"We are thrilled and honored to be recognized by the Autodesk Manufacturing community for this award. It was certainly a team effort." said Joel Neidig, technology manager at ITAMCO.

For ITAMCO, the more precisely a gear is manufactured, the better it will perform, and using Inventor software for design and manufacturing processes makes it possible for the company to manufacture gears to precise sub-micron tolerances at .00004 inches.

This level of precision satisfies even the most demanding customers – such as NASA, which used ITAMCO’s gears on the mechanical arm that built the international space station. 

Additionally, ITAMCO recently designed, manufactured and built a new gearbox for construction vehicles in record time using Inventor and Autodesk Inventor HSM Pro. The software allowed ITAMCO to verify the assembly for any interference issues prior to manufacturing and to utilize the advanced computer aided manufacturing (CAM) capabilities within Inventor HSM Pro for machining and manufacturing the components.

ITAMCO’s operations have also been enhanced by Factory Design Suite, which allows users to digitally optimize a factory layout before it’s completed. This digital exploration came in handy when the company ordered a piece of machinery that can produce gears up to 13 feet in diameter and that weigh as much as 80,000 pounds.

The gear grinder arrived in 11 different crates, each weighing more than 20,000 pounds. With Factory Design Suite, the company was able to conduct careful analysis and simulation of the entire machine virtually before physically assembling and installing it on site, preventing costly mistakes and factory layout revisions. 

As ITAMCO has continued to expand, the company has used Factory Design Suite to lay out new cells and equipment and make sure it meets industry standards of organization and efficiency across the factory floor.