Español English
Example of the life of a design made by Kronan
This page describes an example of a design of a machine, where Kronan has participated from the idea of the customer, through the first design drafts, a prototype, through various stages with improvements, until reaching the state of a final machine, optimized for serial production.
The machine is an assembly of manufactured parts (based on drawings), commercial (wheels, actuators, etc) and standard (screws, etc) components. The manufactured parts are both simple ones as well as welded assemblies, with laser-cut and bent sheet metal parts as well as 3d printed plastic parts. The machine has several movements, some of them adjustable and is equipped with a pneumatic and vacuum circuit.
Tools
Kronan uses advanced 3D design tools, which facilitates significantly the process from the idea to the the manufactured and functional product, while adding value when preparing the technical documentation.
Some of the advantages of the integral 3D design system are:
- The design is highly visual and represents the product as it will be once finished.
- The system make it possible to calculate forces and deformations, etc, for example when validating a structure or when optimizing the usage of material.
- The grand part of the potential errors related to the positioning of holes and interference between parts can be avoided.
- The product can be configured and moved to simulate its final usage.
- The system updates the physical properties and generates the bills of materials required for the procurement and manufacturing.
- They allow an iterative process, where the parts can be evolved and studies be made with little effort while updating the drawings easily.
- Allows making studies of the parts that are being used, for example to unify screws and therefy reducing the number of references (which impacts positively the procurement tasks, the number of references that must be kept in stock, etc).
Results and deliverables
The design is the first phase of the process to manufacture a product , and the following phases and the final result will depend heavily on it.
- Drawings. All the required drawings to manufacture and mount the assembly, including views with details and explosions.
- Visualization. One advantage with 3D is that it can be visualized (for example in a workshop, zooming in details, hiding components or making sections, which offers great help during the manufacturing process.
- BOM. Complete bills of materials to identify all of the required components - both the ones that should be manufactured as well as the commercial components (motors, actuators, etc) and standard components (fastening elements, etc).
- Documentation. Applying a quick adaptation of the available drawings and bills of material (normally reducing the level of included information), these will serve to be supplied as documentation for the customer. The visualization configurations of the design will be of great help when including illustration to the technical documentation (manuals, technical files for CE certificates, etc).
Iterative design and rapid prototyping using 3D printing
In projects like the one in this example, based on an original idea with few references to previous designs, the usage of iterative design in combination with rapid prototyping, in this case using 3D printing in plastic, is very useful and shortens the lead time significantly.
The machine in the example include a vacuum meter (commercial component, which due to the preferred position of installation (accessible and highly visible) is exposed to the common dirt in the place of usage, violence due to falling parts, etc. The to the characteristics of the vacuum meter we opted for the manufacturing of a kind of protective support, incorporating a transparent polycarbonate cover. Applying traditional design concepts, the part would probably be manufactured by machining a plastic or aluminum material to achieve the housing of the vacuum meter and its cover. Kronan opted for a design using additive plastic printing.
It's all about the details. The pgoto above shows the concept of the iterative design combined with rapid prototyping. These are the three gerenations of the design, where the left part is the first version and the one on the right is the design which was finally used in the machines.
The first version (left), although perfectly functional, was excessively heavy and lacking aesthetics. The second iteration (center) reduced the amount of material and looked more elaborate, and was the version used in the prototype. However, during the work to prepare for serial production, we detected several areas of potential improvements. In the final iteration (right) the polycarbonate cover, which up to this point had to be machined to its corresponding dimensions, was replaced by a commercial component, that allowed optimizing the usage of material, achieving a component that is both functional as well as looking attractive.
In this case, due to the production volumes, it resulted economically favorable to employ the 3D printing manufacturing process also for the components used in serial productio.
The final result
The finished product is the result of all the phases of the process, where we can see that the design phase is of great importance since it affects all the following phases, including the procurement of materials, the manufacturing of parts and the assembly of components, and naturally the functionality of the product, its aesthetic aspect and the related costs to produce it.
Of course, the most important when you design a product is that is complies with the desired function. Once this has been accomplished, the design should also make it possible to manufacture it, both technically as well as economically, so that the product will be profitable. And you must not forget some of the other important added values, such as the product being aesthetically attractive, easy to use and maintain, characteristics that normally is highly valued by the customers and users.
For these reasons, Kronan refers to the integral design, where the objective is to join all these aspects to acheive a product which is functional, technically and economically feasible, and which is also good looking and practical.
Contact Kronan to discuss how we can help to with your design needs and requirements.
Our company
Based on experience - team with more than 20 years in the automotive industry.
Our vision
- Solve the customer's problems with simple solutions that work.
- Add value through integral design.
- Establish longterm relationships.
Our tools
- Solid Edge 2025 Premium
- Microsoft Office (advanced automation in Excel y Access using VBA )