When faced with critical deadlines on development and execution of this project, they turned to The Manufacturing Collaborative for design assistance. Low Pressure Studio’s Director of Product Design and Development for Bindings, Justin Frappier, wanted to use design simulation technology to help reduce the cost and time of design iterations. “We were challenged to integrate the revolutionary FASE technology into our existing LPS chassis for Rome and Bataleon brands. Our goal was to bring this technology to market as efficiently as possible. This efficiency was crucial to keep development costs down and avoid wasting tooling investments.”
In this case FEA or finite element analysis can be used to identify portions of the design under high stress. By simulating the forces in the CAD model, weak areas in the design can be identified. Design adjustments can be made, and the analysis can be performed in an iterative process that is far faster and less expensive than making parts and testing them.
Jon Ferguson, Senior Design Engineer at The Manufacturing Collaborative provides further insight to the process: “The FASE bindings were an incredibly cool project to work on, so we wanted to make sure things were done right. Anyone can put an assembly in CAD and get it to output some numbers and pictures, but it takes experience to know how to simplify an assembly for accurate, efficient, and repeatable results. The key components to be evaluated in the FASE designs were the Heelhoop and FASE Hub. By creating a series of free body diagrams to analyze the forces acting on these components, as generated by the snowboarder and transferred through the Highback and F.L.A. components, we were able to simplify the complex assembly into individual point loads. These contact-point loads gave us three-dimensional force vectors we could apply to the different design configurations to determine which performed best. From there, we were able to generate a comprehensive report comparing variables and results for the client to use in their decision making.”
Heelhoop component under simulated forces shows the relative strain on the part
Several rounds of design and FEA analysis were performed before the final design was approved. For production, the time and expense of injection molding require a real commitment to the design. Because the winter sports product market is seasonal, the deadline for having products ready for consumers is critical.
Justin Frappier indicated the substantial impact of rapid design iteration by stating “The Manufacturing Collaborative’s team was able to help us filter through a range of concepts so that we could bring the best one to life. With their services we were able to quickly iterate, simulate, and repeat. This iterative design and simulation process allowed us to bring to market the most successful binding chassis in Rome and Bataleon’s history with zero wasted tooling investment.”
Check out the final product (and cool snowboarding video) by clicking here: https://romesnowboards.com/pages/fase and here: https://bataleon.com/pages/fase-bindings-system
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- Design & Reverse Engineering
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