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Exceptional
Service Leads to Project Success Despite
Condensed Timeline
 The
full-service, custom plastic injection molding company
provides a full range of design and engineering services, as well as
custom tooling and manufacturing. As a solution
provider, the company often creates concepts and designs for
manufacturing parts which can include reverse engineering support from
outside resources.
The Challenge:
The ultimate
customer, a major golf club manufacturer, urgently needed a completely
new display system including an injection molded golf club holder clip
for a national sales campaign in conjunction with a sales meeting and
industry show in Florida where golf industry manufacturers introduce
their products. First contact came to the plastic injection molding
company in mid-November 2006. The design engineer was given eight weeks
to complete the project of updating the design of the holder and
producing production injection mold tooling. Since the project had an
abbreviated timeline and needed two iterations to create the correct
fit, quick turn-around was imperative. “Our customer and supplier truly
put everything on the line contracting us (and hence GKS) to do this
clip. Without it, the rollout of their entire 2007 multi-million dollar
campaign would have been compromised,” said the engineer of the
project. “Failure was not an option here!”
The complex molded
plastic part for the golf club holder was needed for displaying a
new line of drivers. The new part was similar to a previous one, but
with some modifications. The holder would have to accommodate the new
clubs while still working for the older woods and irons, in other words,
a universal club holder. The multifaceted project required a 4-cavity
mold and had complicated, irregular geometry with an extremely short
roll-out timeframe.
The complete golf
club display system was being made by a sheet metal supplier, who sent the
original part to the injection molding company with a description of the
necessary modifications. The company sculpted a mock-up with modeling
clay to design the shape of the new part. At this point, they needed to
rapidly produce a prototype to test if the part would function correctly
before manufacturing over 200,000 copies.
The Solution:
 As
it turns out, the injection molding company had used 3D laser scanning
provided by Laser Design a number of years ago, but hadn’t needed the
service since. When the design engineer was looking for a speedy
solution, he mentioned the project to another colleague, who had more
recently used GKS Inspection Services, a division of Laser Design, for
part verification. “They will exceed your expectations,” the colleague
told him. Once the engineer re-found GKS, the project went into high
gear. He spoke with Larry Carlberg, and right away, he knew that “Larry
was on it.”
With over 25 years in
the business, GKS metrologists have experience with all kinds of unusual
custom projects. Most important to this project was good communication
with the engineer to “determine the best method to achieve success” on
such a short timeline, according to Carlberg. The hand-made clay model
of the club holder would be scanned to create a modified database for
the part that would perform just as well with the new club designs as
with the old. “The trick was to identify this new hand-made shape so
the revisions could be made in the injection molding,” Carlberg
explained. Laser scanning with the RPS 450 probe and the part mounted
to a rotary stage was an ideal method to capture this unusual shape. The
RPS 450 probe allowed sufficient accuracy and depth of field to capture
all the changes made to the clay-modified club holder with minimal scan
time.
Carlberg described to
the engineer the approach he would take and how to address the issues of
the irregular surfaces as well as the internal cavity. He explained the
pros and cons for the output of the data. Since the company had worked
with GKS through Laser Design before, the engineer’s confidence level
was high that the project would succeed, so he gave the go-ahead.
Because the laser
scanning system projects a line of laser light onto surfaces while
cameras continuously triangulate the changing distance and profile of
the laser line as it sweeps along, the problems of missing data on an
irregularly shaped or hollowed out surface is eliminated. The system
measures fine details and captures complex freeform geometry so that the
object can be exactly replicated. Using a non-contact scanning method
for this project was crucial, since the model was made of a pliable
material, modeling clay, and anything touching the surface would have
altered the exact shape. Laser scanners quickly measure articles,
picking up tens of thousands of points per second, and generating huge
numbers of data points without the need for templates or fixtures.
Once the part was
scanned, the engineer imported the model into his CAD design software,
Pro/Engineer, so they could make the necessary tooling changes for
designing their mold. “A good first step to verify that the new design
had correct modifications is to make a prototype model of the holder and
test the results with actual clubs,” continued Carlberg. “Since we were
able to export Pro/Engineer files in the native file extension .prt, the
customer was able to quickly export STL prototype files for making the
test prototypes.” The prototype models verified that the new design was
correct and the injection molding company proceeded with confidence
knowing that the new parts would work the same way.
The Results:
 Because
a very high output was required in a short amount of time for the
product launch, GKS’s Carlberg provided his best customer service.
“This project was on a very fast track to satisfy market demands. Our
team was able to quote, scan, model and deliver the .prt files in less
than one week,” said Carlberg. The first contact was the week before
Thanksgiving. Because of the short turn-around time required to do two
iterations, the prototype and the final working model, Carlberg “went
the extra mile and created the first pass during the holiday weekend,”
according to the engineer. “The first iteration was superior quality.”
The injection molding
company performed some minor revisions to the prototype to perfect to
final model, and one week later, Carlberg again worked over the weekend
to create the final scan data due to rush schedule for output. Carlberg
commented, “Engineers familiar with the molding business would agree
that a two-week span from initial contact to completed and approved
models is an extraordinary pace.” Even with this level of service and
know-how, GKS’s bid was “competitively priced along with industry
expectations,” said the design engineer.
Because of GKS’s
technical expertise, efficiency, and exceptional customer service, the
company was able to complete the high-risk job of creating 200,000 parts
from concept to completion in a 12-week timeframe. The final CAD model
derived from scan data was sent to an
Asian tool partner and the 4-cavity mold was concurrently constructed.
With a 24/7 production schedule, the large run was completed in time for
the national launch and show.
“The experience was
great. The follow-up letter asking how GKS could improve service for us
in the future and advising us of additional services offered was
excellent,” said the design engineer of his contact with GKS. “They
sincerely wanted to know how the service was and how to improve it. I
intend to continue to take advantage of the expertise GKS can provide by
maintaining an ongoing synergistic relationship with them. Usually a
product development lifecycle of this sort can take several months to
complete. GKS helped us do it in just over 4 weeks from start to
production.”
For more information
about how GKS Inspection Services can improve your manufactured product,
save you money and decrease your development time, call Larry Carlberg
at 952-252-3433 or send an email to
measure@gks.com.
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