Design & Manufacturing 7

[MadMango]

I would have titled this Design for Manufacturing, but I didn't what to bias people right off the bat.

I'm just looking to get a feel for what others are doing. This question deals with sheet metal design and in-house punch press fabrication, but could apply to anything designed where your resources are limited to certain manufacturing processes.

I'm wondering if you have created pallet parts or library features (or other) of your standard punches and dies for in-house fabrication, or design from a list of available sizes, or if you design what you need and let your manufacturing department worry about meeting your specifiactions?

In this day and age of competitve markets and constant drive to produce the highest quality item at the lowest possible manufacturing cost, it dawned on me that I should be designing with manufacturing (as well as assembly, maintenance, asthetics, durability, quality, etc) considerations clearly at the forefront on my mind. I'm just curious to see how others are addressing this.

[green]"But what... is it good for?"[/green]
Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.
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[2ManyHats]

Hey, I agree totally when it comes to an engineering compromise based on our professional judgement.

The compromise that leaves a sour taste in my mouth is where Marketing force an overly expensive 'Feature' on a product with a fixed budget. You as a designer are then often forced to produce a product where the remaining material costs are so low that the engineering standard is dropped.

Either that or you hive off the problem on to Manufacturing by leaving them with too small a budget to use skilled staff or adequete testing time.

 

[StiLLiving]

Much thanks to MadMango for starting this thread.
Star it

Regards...

 

[sirmick]

The bottom line, I suppose is economics, the dollar is a nice common metric. Obviously, if you work closely with a fabricator, or you fabricate the item yourself, knowing the tooling and capabilities that exist can save you a lot of money.

If you send out a print to be bid on by several people it may not be as easy to design the part for each set of tools but maybe you can be flexible if they call and say that they have a 0.203 punch and can they use that instead of a 0.210 punch if it saves you $0.75 a part.

I wouldn't however, allow existing processes and tooling determine everything. Again, it depends upon the market, but without pushing the envelope how do new processes and tools get invented?

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

sirmick ... The companies I work for don't have tool or fabrication shops. They do use tried & trusted shops, but are always looking for better quotes & turnarounds. So as I said before, I design for what is best for the product, not the shop, as I never know which shop will be doing the work. If a shop asks if a feature can be changed, because of existing tooling or limited capabilities, & if the economics make sense, then a compromise will be found.