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The manufacturer produces home vacuum packaging systems and small electric
kitchen appliances, cookware, and kitchen tools. Their product lines are
distributed through leading specialty chain and independent cookware
stores throughout the U.S. and Canada. Their electric line includes
wafflers, grills, Dual Station Smoothee-Bars, Ice Cream and Gelato Makers,
Power Cookie Presses, Classic Coffee Urns and other products. Their new
cookware lines are hand-poured and gravity-cast to provide slow, even and
flavorful cooking. The company offers a traditional collection of kitchen
tools, including pasta machines, pizza stones, food strainers, meat
grinders, espresso pots and many hard-to-find specialty hand tools.
Unique waffler
design
The new waffler
goes far beyond previous products in that it produces a waffle with a
complex 3D shape, in this case a bouquet of roses. “We already have the
reputation for designing award-winning waffle makers but now we are
enabling our customers to use our products to produce waffles that are not
only delicious but beautiful as well,” said the mechanical design
engineer. “I don’t know of any waffle iron that has ever offered a waffle
with an organic 3D design before. Our goal with our latest design was to
get our customers to say ‘wow’! We roughed out the floral design that we
wanted to produce and hired a design studio to sculpt a model. The
studio’s job was not easy because they had to produce a design that was
beautiful while also meeting our physical requirements, which for a
waffler are similar to injection molding. In particular, the contours of
the pattern need to have a draft angle to make it easy to remove the
waffle. The design studio, of course, was more accustomed to meeting
aesthetic than engineering concerns, so several iterations were required.
At the end of this process, we had a design that was beautiful and also
met the physical requirements needed to make a perfect waffle,” he said.
With the model
completed, engineers next faced the challenge of converting it to the
solid model they needed to produce the mold used to die cast the waffler.
“It would have been very difficult for a CAD designer to duplicate the
studio’s creation by hand,” said the engineer. “If we had asked one of our
designers to take on this arduous task, the chances are they would have
spent weeks or even months without ever capturing the beauty of the floral
design. Today’s CAD software offers some 3D contouring capability but not
anywhere near the level that would be required to accurately capture a
design of this complexity. A designer would have to capture tens of
thousands of points with a CMM to come anywhere close to depicting the
beauty of the original design.” The use of CMMs to inspect parts is
time-consuming because of the need to manually move the machine probe into
position for each individual point to be measured. As the geometrical
complexity of the part increases, the number of points needed to fully
characterize the geometry skyrockets. Even if operators spend several
weeks generating thousands of points, they can never be sure that they
haven’t missed a critical feature.
The engineer was
aware of the technology of laser scanning and thought it would be the best
way to convert the sculpture’s model to a CAD file. Laser scanning systems
work by projecting laser light onto surfaces while cameras continuously
triangulate the changing distance and profile of the laser as it sweeps
along, enabling the object to be accurately replicated. Laser scanners are
able to quickly measure large parts while generating far greater numbers
of data points than touch probes without the need for templates or
fixtures. Laser scanning can replicate the complete geometry of a complex
part to a high level of accuracy, often to within 1 thousandth of an inch.
The model can also be superimposed upon the original design geometry to
determine exactly where they differ. Since there is no probe on a laser
scanner that must physically touch the object, the problems of depressing
soft objects and measuring small cavities are eliminated. But with a
relatively small number of parts that needed scanning every year, it made
no sense for the manufacturer to buy a laser scanner. The cost would have
been high and the company would have faced the challenge of training
operators and maintenance staff. They also would have faced the risk that
the machine could become obsolete before it had paid for itself.
Capturing the
organic beauty of the model
The engineer said
that soon before this need arose, the manufacturer had begun working with
a service bureau operated by GKS Inspection Services Inc., Minneapolis, Minnesota,
that offers laser scanning services on a project basis. “We originally
found them on the Internet,” he said. “We were in a crunch and needed to
quickly convert a physical object into a 3D CAD Design. They kept their
word by meeting our schedule and the quality of their work was
outstanding. When the waffler project came along it was natural to use
them again. I shipped the model to them so it arrived on a Monday. They
scanned the parts and generated a point cloud in which each individual
point was accurate within 20 microns and the surfaces generated from the
point cloud were accurate to at least 0.004 inch. By Thursday they emailed
me a 3D solid model of the waffle iron. We checked some of the surfaces
and they were right on. Just as important, they had captured the organic
beauty of the design, which would have been almost impossible by hand. The
ability to translate this complex model into a CAD in just a few days for
a very reasonable price played a key role in getting the product to market
on schedule.”
“CAD software is
great for defining structured geometry but it’s no match for the complex
curves involved in reproducing a living object,” the engineer concluded.
“Laser scanning provided the ideal solution to our problem by maintaining
high accuracy while picking up all of the small details required to
deliver an aesthetically pleasing and manufacturable product. The waffles
produced by our new waffler look like you froze several flowers into them,
exactly the look that we were trying to achieve. We used the solid models
provided by GKS Inspection Services as the starting point for designing the die
casting molds used to produce the wafflers. We have produced six different
variations on the design, some that we will sell under our own name and
others for our private label customers. GKS Inspection Services’ willingness to work
with us and meet our needs promptly played a key role in our ability to
bring an innovative and creative design to market in the shortest possible
time. The waffler market has been fairly staid and laid back up to now but
we intended to really shake it up. Our plan is to make this new product
just the first in a series of designs that produce waffles that look
almost too good to eat.” |
