Faster flow: molder helps innovative vacuum-cleaner motor get to market quickly
Makers of vacuum cleaners are always looking for new ways to maximize the performance of their products. They want increased airflow efficiency better motor life, yet at the same time, want to reduce noise. These goals can often conflict, a fact well known by companies like Ametek, Paoli, Pa., a leading supplier of air moving motors for the floor care industry.
Undeterred by such a challenge, Ametek developed and recently launched a new line of household vacuum-cleaner motors called Advantek[TM], designed to meet those competing objectives. The motors are novel, not only because of their distinctive design and highend performance, but also because they represent the culmination of an innovative product design and development methodology used by Ametek engineers to bring high-value motors to market.
For Ametek design engineers, achieving such goals meant searching beyond traditional solutions to radically alter two core motor elements: the carbon-brush system, which regulates motor life and is susceptible to high temperatures, and the air-handling diffuser, which provides both the internal cooling air circulation, and the working air for vacuum suction.
In conventional vacuum motor models, the carbon-brush system is generally mounted top-side up on the motor's rotating armature, which allows adequate cooling airflow and temperature regulation. In an effort to obtain maximum cooling airflow efficiency, Ametek engineers designed the armature support and carbon brush system to hang upside down in the motor. This radical move enables the coolest air to be routed directly to these critical motor parts, reducing parasitic high temperatures and improving brush and motor life, a critical improvement vital to enhanced motor performance and greater airflow effciencies.
With these airflow improvements in place, Ametek designers moved to help remedy the second concern of their customers--disruptive motor noise. To address this challenge they tackled a redesign of the air diffuser, which is responsible for pumping air through the vacuum cleaner system. By reconfiguring the fan-blade arrangement and port placement within the blades of the air diffuser, Ametek was able to significantly reduce overall motor noise.
"Through unconventional thinking, we discovered that by redesigning this motor basically upside down from previous designs, we were able to get considerably more running hours for the same amount of material, without sacrificing performance quality," says Jim Shawcross, vice president of engineering in Ametek's global floor care motors division. "We also dramatically reduced noise levels."
With all of this advanced design work in place, Ametek now faced another significant challenge: finding a quick turnaround prototype-creation process capable of producing real, functional parts. Without this ability, Ametek would be unable to accurately demonstrate its new design's capabilities to key customers in the floor care industry.
With their new motor design completed, Ametek engineers knew using a hand-crafted model to illustrate the motor's capabilities wouldn't do justice to Advantek's innovative design. On the other hand, Ametek designers also knew that conventional prototyping methods couldn't provide the quality they needed. So, they began to explore new options.
After a member of the design team recalled hearing about a new method to quickly develop plastic injection-molded parts for prototype testing, the Ametek design team logged onto the Web site of Protomold, Maple Plain, Minn., a provider of "rapid injection molding." An emerging technology, rapid injection molding utilizes proprietary software technology and high-speed CNC machining to produce injection-molded parts from 3-D computer-aided design (CAD) models in as little as three days.
Impressed with what they saw on the Web site, Ametek designers submitted their 3-D CAD design online via www.protomold.com to explore the feasibility of creating their prototype using rapid injection molding. The team then received an interactive ProtoQuote[R] from Protomold--a Web based price quotation with suggestions for potential design improvements that illustrates the effect of using different materials, compares lead-time options and lists final price points based on quantity.
"With ProtoQuote, we were able to analyze our part models, specifically looking at key design elements that might affect lead time, right from the start," Shawcross says. "Making design changes online versus trying to describe alterations over the phone, which could mean possible miscommunication, proved a huge advantage for us in getting a functional model in front of our customers within an unprecedented week's time frame."
Using rapid injection molding, the Ametek design team was able to receive functional pilot parts in five days for use in customer demonstrations and get their design approval--greatly surpassing their industry's customary standard of merely supplying hand-built models. For this reason, rapid injection molding helped streamline the demanding product design and development process that came next.
In developing the Advantek motor line for household vacuum cleaner manufacturers, Ametek designers adhered to a strict product design and development process that was scheduled to meet product rollout deadlines. From the time of the first discussion between Ametek engineers and an OEM customer, to placing the end product on store shelves, the company's strict development schedule allowed for only 12 months. Within this time period, the schedule allowed only seven months to finalize the motor design, complete design and performance testing, and ramp up their motor manufacturing facility. Unsurprisingly, Ametek designers were in serious need of a prototype process that could handle a short turnaround request, without sacrificing quality.
"The manufacturing industry as a whole has experienced a dramatic decrease in the product design and development lifecycle to meet ever-shrinking operating budgets," Shawcross says. "The life-cycle time frame has shifted from two years a decade ago to less than a year today. As a result, it's absolutely critical to find ways of staying within a shortened production and design time frame."
With increasing pressures for a quick turnaround at all stages of the product design and development process, Ametek designers began seeking a shift from prototype-creation methods limited in terms of material selection, quality, quantity and speed. For example, most rapid prototyping methods, although speedy, could deliver only one part per run and involved materials that tended to melt or deform during rigorous performance tests. To combat such problems, functional testing was often put on hold until a production tool could be developed, a process typically requiring up to 16 weeks.
The designers found a solution that rapid injection molding overcame these problems. Instead of delaying performance testing until a production tool could be created, Ametek used rapid injection molding to create 100 production-quality parts, enabling key tests to be conducted by its customer, as well as its engineering and manufacturing departments--all within just a week's time. Rapid injection molding enabled Ametek to break through traditional product development barriers and complete performance testing far earlier in the process than ever before possible.
"The best design in the world isn't any good if it can't be built right every time," Shawcross says. "With rapid injection molding, the quality of each and every one of our 100 parts was excellent, not only in terms of accuracy, but also in terms of providing a material durable enough to withstand our rigorous physical testing procedures."
Protomold provided Ametek with real injection-molded parts constructed in DuPont Rynite FR 945 fire-retardant, glass-filled PET thermoplastic polyester, a material strong enough to survive the heat and pressure generated from performance tests. During initial performance tests, Ametek engineers were able to obtain enough preliminary input and output measurements of airstream and thermal temperature data to confirm Advantek's performance and begin tool development for high volume production.
"If we'd had to wait on the production tool to uncover a fundamental design problem, we would've been in a tough spot in terms of fixing it by the product manufacturing deadline," Shawcross says. "Being able to actually use these prototype parts to catch potential design adjustments before going into production, especially with the tighter timelines, really gave us a head start and helped keep our customers happy. Previous prototypes could not support the rigorous physical testing required, let alone allow tool development to begin during the testing phase."
Undeterred by such a challenge, Ametek developed and recently launched a new line of household vacuum-cleaner motors called Advantek[TM], designed to meet those competing objectives. The motors are novel, not only because of their distinctive design and highend performance, but also because they represent the culmination of an innovative product design and development methodology used by Ametek engineers to bring high-value motors to market.
For Ametek design engineers, achieving such goals meant searching beyond traditional solutions to radically alter two core motor elements: the carbon-brush system, which regulates motor life and is susceptible to high temperatures, and the air-handling diffuser, which provides both the internal cooling air circulation, and the working air for vacuum suction.
In conventional vacuum motor models, the carbon-brush system is generally mounted top-side up on the motor's rotating armature, which allows adequate cooling airflow and temperature regulation. In an effort to obtain maximum cooling airflow efficiency, Ametek engineers designed the armature support and carbon brush system to hang upside down in the motor. This radical move enables the coolest air to be routed directly to these critical motor parts, reducing parasitic high temperatures and improving brush and motor life, a critical improvement vital to enhanced motor performance and greater airflow effciencies.
With these airflow improvements in place, Ametek designers moved to help remedy the second concern of their customers--disruptive motor noise. To address this challenge they tackled a redesign of the air diffuser, which is responsible for pumping air through the vacuum cleaner system. By reconfiguring the fan-blade arrangement and port placement within the blades of the air diffuser, Ametek was able to significantly reduce overall motor noise.
"Through unconventional thinking, we discovered that by redesigning this motor basically upside down from previous designs, we were able to get considerably more running hours for the same amount of material, without sacrificing performance quality," says Jim Shawcross, vice president of engineering in Ametek's global floor care motors division. "We also dramatically reduced noise levels."
Functional parts
With all of this advanced design work in place, Ametek now faced another significant challenge: finding a quick turnaround prototype-creation process capable of producing real, functional parts. Without this ability, Ametek would be unable to accurately demonstrate its new design's capabilities to key customers in the floor care industry.
With their new motor design completed, Ametek engineers knew using a hand-crafted model to illustrate the motor's capabilities wouldn't do justice to Advantek's innovative design. On the other hand, Ametek designers also knew that conventional prototyping methods couldn't provide the quality they needed. So, they began to explore new options.
After a member of the design team recalled hearing about a new method to quickly develop plastic injection-molded parts for prototype testing, the Ametek design team logged onto the Web site of Protomold, Maple Plain, Minn., a provider of "rapid injection molding." An emerging technology, rapid injection molding utilizes proprietary software technology and high-speed CNC machining to produce injection-molded parts from 3-D computer-aided design (CAD) models in as little as three days.
Impressed with what they saw on the Web site, Ametek designers submitted their 3-D CAD design online via www.protomold.com to explore the feasibility of creating their prototype using rapid injection molding. The team then received an interactive ProtoQuote[R] from Protomold--a Web based price quotation with suggestions for potential design improvements that illustrates the effect of using different materials, compares lead-time options and lists final price points based on quantity.
"With ProtoQuote, we were able to analyze our part models, specifically looking at key design elements that might affect lead time, right from the start," Shawcross says. "Making design changes online versus trying to describe alterations over the phone, which could mean possible miscommunication, proved a huge advantage for us in getting a functional model in front of our customers within an unprecedented week's time frame."
Using rapid injection molding, the Ametek design team was able to receive functional pilot parts in five days for use in customer demonstrations and get their design approval--greatly surpassing their industry's customary standard of merely supplying hand-built models. For this reason, rapid injection molding helped streamline the demanding product design and development process that came next.
Speeding the process
In developing the Advantek motor line for household vacuum cleaner manufacturers, Ametek designers adhered to a strict product design and development process that was scheduled to meet product rollout deadlines. From the time of the first discussion between Ametek engineers and an OEM customer, to placing the end product on store shelves, the company's strict development schedule allowed for only 12 months. Within this time period, the schedule allowed only seven months to finalize the motor design, complete design and performance testing, and ramp up their motor manufacturing facility. Unsurprisingly, Ametek designers were in serious need of a prototype process that could handle a short turnaround request, without sacrificing quality.
"The manufacturing industry as a whole has experienced a dramatic decrease in the product design and development lifecycle to meet ever-shrinking operating budgets," Shawcross says. "The life-cycle time frame has shifted from two years a decade ago to less than a year today. As a result, it's absolutely critical to find ways of staying within a shortened production and design time frame."
With increasing pressures for a quick turnaround at all stages of the product design and development process, Ametek designers began seeking a shift from prototype-creation methods limited in terms of material selection, quality, quantity and speed. For example, most rapid prototyping methods, although speedy, could deliver only one part per run and involved materials that tended to melt or deform during rigorous performance tests. To combat such problems, functional testing was often put on hold until a production tool could be developed, a process typically requiring up to 16 weeks.
The designers found a solution that rapid injection molding overcame these problems. Instead of delaying performance testing until a production tool could be created, Ametek used rapid injection molding to create 100 production-quality parts, enabling key tests to be conducted by its customer, as well as its engineering and manufacturing departments--all within just a week's time. Rapid injection molding enabled Ametek to break through traditional product development barriers and complete performance testing far earlier in the process than ever before possible.
"The best design in the world isn't any good if it can't be built right every time," Shawcross says. "With rapid injection molding, the quality of each and every one of our 100 parts was excellent, not only in terms of accuracy, but also in terms of providing a material durable enough to withstand our rigorous physical testing procedures."
Protomold provided Ametek with real injection-molded parts constructed in DuPont Rynite FR 945 fire-retardant, glass-filled PET thermoplastic polyester, a material strong enough to survive the heat and pressure generated from performance tests. During initial performance tests, Ametek engineers were able to obtain enough preliminary input and output measurements of airstream and thermal temperature data to confirm Advantek's performance and begin tool development for high volume production.
"If we'd had to wait on the production tool to uncover a fundamental design problem, we would've been in a tough spot in terms of fixing it by the product manufacturing deadline," Shawcross says. "Being able to actually use these prototype parts to catch potential design adjustments before going into production, especially with the tighter timelines, really gave us a head start and helped keep our customers happy. Previous prototypes could not support the rigorous physical testing required, let alone allow tool development to begin during the testing phase."
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