標籤: Mechanical Engineering

In this article, Dennis will share his experience years ago participating a practical project from concept to production: The development of a consumer electronic product. Briefly to use 10 steps to explain how it was made, from concept, sketching, prototype, molding and all the way to mass-production.

Step 1         Brainstorming

Once the project is off the ground, project manager/leader will call a meeting the participants including sales, marketing, designer, engineer to contribute their experiences or comments. I realized some people commented design thinking is better qualified to explore users’ unmet need rather than brainstorming session. Steve Jobs even said, “We do no market research.” Dennis personally see Steve Jobs as God in mind, dare not to challenge his achievements. Anyhow let’s put the argument aside and see how other people did by using the method of brainstorming.

The leader of brainstorming is crucial, their attitude or leading skill will decide whether the meeting is success or not. The leader should inspire the participants with passion to evoke varieties of creative ideas, less interference and free from the limitation of technology. I will not focus on brainstorming here, more discussion will be left in other chapter about PM, Product management.

Step 2         Converging the imaginative ideas into product specification

Most of the ideas proposed by participants in brainstorming are wild. Good idea always meaning customers are interested to buy-in. But in the brainstorming make no pre-judge to those ideas are crucial.

Step 3         Building Function Block Diagram and developing hardware, software and firmware

The function block diagram is the fundamental of the whole device/system to be developed. With the diagram, the E/E, Electrical engineer will have a whole picture among main board, wireless module, power board of your system. Once the structure is confirmed, the following step is to develop circuit diagram then gerber out for PCB manufacturing.

Step 4         Concept development and sketching

After brainstorming session, the product manager organizes those proposed ideas into MRS, Marketing Requirement Specification document. Following, the industrial designers start creating design concepts as much as they can base on MRS using variety of drawing tools, e.g. pigment pen, marker, color pencil…etc. taking balance between forms and functions.

Step 5         3D Model & rendering

Normal people without design degree or trained to “imagine” the essential of 2D sketches. 3D modeling technique today is very realistic to simulate real things in life than before. Creo, Solidworks, UG, Alias, Rhino…are all popular in the market to build any kind of free-form surface. Once 3D model is built the outer dimension of the product also decided.

Thanks to the modern rendering technology, industrial designer is hundred times easier to finish a realistic outcome using professional tool like V-Ray or Keyshot than before. Any color, material, texture or lighting all just at a click.

Step 6         Mechanical engineering

The 3D model created by industrial designer can’t be applied for manufacturing because it is not the major task to consider if the design conforms with the need from manufacturing point of view. Next, now is the show time for mechanical engineer. They deeply care if the parts could be molded or shaped and if the parts are robust enough to resist the harsh use in real scenario. Adding ribs, draft angle, snaps, boss, groove, wall thickness, all must be well considered in this stage. Industrial designer concerns about usability, and mechanical engineer cares about functionality and reliability.

Step 7         Prototype

Working prototype is the only/effective way for potential users, buyers or even angels to touch-and-feel your concept before it officially goes mass-production. Once the 3D CAD completed by mechanical engineer, the factory is able to manufacture those parts whatever they are plastic or metal using CNC machine. In real process, the factory engineer will re-organize the way to build the parts according to his experience using less material and time to minimize the cost the customer would happy to afford. After the parts are CNC milled, following step the technician will polish, refine then painting by following the CMF documents we repeatedly mentioned earlier. Finally, you can assemble the PCBA (PCB Assembly with all electrical components on PCB) together with enclosures then you have a working prototype to live-demo to whom interests to your project.

Step 8         Molds development

Most modern consumer products use thermoplastics. In process, the heated molten plastic is injected into the space formed by the cavity-side and core-side of the mold under high pressure and high speed through molding machine. There are kinds of steel used for mold, such as: S50C, P20, NAK80 (pre-hardened steel) or SUS420 (stainless steel), etc. The standard process to build the molds including CNC, wire-cut, EDM (Electro-discharge machining), fine-tuning, polishing and final assembly. Product designers can assign any specific area of the product surface with different textures using MOLD-TECH texture template which is well-known global standard in industry.

Step 9         Molding

Step 10       Assembly and mass-production

In 21^st century, the assembly line for mass-production invented by Ford Motor Company, founded in 1927 still proves working well today. The labor follows the SOP to make assembly step by step in preset station. The advantage of applying assembly line is every worker can get same result as others do long as you fully follow the SOP. In industry, you can rely on the EMS, Electronic Manufacturing Service to make FATP, Final Assembly Test & Packing for product mass-production.

It’s an annoying journey to go through the whole hardware development process from concept all the way to production. But you are not alone, you can find many materials like articles, classes, videos on-line to self-learning. Congratulations! you have a whole picture about developing an electronic product now, what’s your next step? Take an action of course.

References link

Recommend hardware accelerator
https://hax.co/
https://bolt.io/
http://highway1.io/
https://www.plugandplaytechcenter.com/

More contents about hardware innovation to share with you, stay tuned!
Email contact: dennis.you@tw-mpi.com