Author: Bryce Holliss
In the 3 previous issues of this Design Knowledge Series, we’ve looked at the questions you need to be asking in order to decipher if a product has been designed well, how to identify and distinguish product features and manufacturing-based design decisions, and what designing for manufacturing (DFM) truly means.
To bring everything together, let us take a look at a product we worked on here at Dienamics –the MK1 MAXTRAX off road vehicle recovery track.
Brad McCarthy, MAXTRAX’s founder, came up with the idea for the MAXTRAX vehicle recovery track after bogging his vehicle on a remote North Queensland beach with an incoming tide. Brad came to Dienamics after working with another design house in Brisbane, only to be left with a prototype that did not fulfil his needs and product design that could not be manufactured.
The design company Brad had originally gone to had no experience, or capability, in injection moulding and manufacturing. Ultimately, this left him wasting time and money, only to be left with something that was completely useless and having to start again. They lacked the vital experience, resources, and background required in order to effectively design real-world, manufacturable, products.
The MAXTRAX needed to be strong enough to hold a vehicle, and durable enough to withstand a lifetime of use…
The design house Brad initially worked with made the mistake of not making the part strong through its geometry, and instead choosing to try and make it strong by just making it very thick. What they designed him, was in essence, a large brick with holes in it. The product was not stackable, was extremely heavy, and at over a 100mm thick wall section was simply impossible to injection mould.
If you built an injection moulding tool for a plastic part that thick, the injection pressure required to fill the cavity fast enough before the plastic solidified would be insanely high, and the clamping tonnage to keep the tool closed under this injection pressure would be equally so.
Even if you managed to inject the plastic, for the part to cool, it would have to sit closed in the tool for over 15minutes as the heat escaped, and then it would come out warped, deformed, and covered in sinks marks. You’d be left with a part that takes an excessively long amount of time to produce, is excessively expensive to manufacture, and is completely useless.
After bringing this design to Dienamics to enquire about tooling and moulding, our director Mark was left explaining to Brad that the design he had was completely useless; it was unsalvageable…
This happens way too often for our liking, where we see fundamentally wrong designs that design-only firms have drawn up. This is one of the reasons Dienamics originally got into product design after years of focusing on tooling and moulding, because we found ourselves having to redesign other companies designs to make products work.
Brad employed Dienamics to redesign the MAXTRAX. Taking inspiration from two strong every-day products, egg-cartons, and corrugated iron, the MK1 MAXTARX was redesigned into the part you see in the image below. Further, knowing that the track needed to be rigid, but also needed to flex enough so that it didn’t crack or shatter, Dienamics was able to select the best suitable material for the product – glass reinforced, engineering grade nylon.
Geometrically designing for strength, Dienamics was able to design Brad a product that could be injection moulded, was stackable, was durable, and with only a 5mm nominal wall thickness was also very lightweight, and low-cost to manufacture.
Dienamics further went on to prototype this MAXTRAX design, as well as build the 3-tonne injection moulding tool to make it! Brad was able to come to Dienamics and get everything done correctly and done under one roof.
The more hands a project gets passed through, the more chances there is for the ball to get dropped. That’s why when you come to us, we offer the complete one-source product development process so that this risk doesn’t exist.
Come see us today if you want your product designed and manufactured the right way. We are here to work with you to see your dream idea come to life.
Need more info?
Why not check out the rest of our blogs in this Design Knowledge Series, or the detailed white-paper versions for more information!
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