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Home : How We
Do It : R & D Mentality
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 Preserving
Original Vision
We strike the right balance when interpreting project requirements—we
know when to question assumptions and product requirements,
and when a strict interpretation is critical to the success
of the project. We preserve or enhance the designer's original
vision while engineering a product that can be manufactured
easily. You can count on us to ask the right questions and to
give you just what you're looking for.
Identifying and Addressing Potential Problems
With our broad product design experience we can often identify
potential problems at the design stage, and avoid them, saving
time and money later in the project. We also try to foresee
which areas that may change due to performance or other requirements
that may be evolving as the product is designed—these
areas are treated with extra care to make sure that modifications
later on, either to the mechanical design or to the parts themselves,
will be easy. For example, we may ensure that a gear ratio can
be modified easily by simply swtiching gears with no change
to the gearbox or product housing.
Other potential problems may be due to manufacturing. Products
may be designed in the U.S. for a U.S. company, but manufactured
in the Far East by an independent factory where design and production
controls may be out of reach. We recognize these realities and
design our products to be easy to assemble properly. We design
the precision into the hard tooling rather than relying on fixtures
or complex assembly procedures to build good products. Fixtures
can drift out of alignment and assembly procedures are not always
followed.
Compressed schedules can result in design cycles without the
time or budget for iterative testing and/or simulation to predict
product performance. We can help design “on the edge”
to get the lightest or cheapest parts, but plan on a fallback
in case it is needed. For example, a housing may be molded without
stiffening ribs to reduce shot weight. By anticipating a potential
need for those features, they could be added late in the cycle
without interfering with internal components such as PC boards
or motors
Resolving Conflicting Requirements
Creative Engineering has the ability to take on a project with
very little up front information. If your design requirements
are preliminary or if you have a problem with no clear solution,
we will sift through the information and return to you a clear
menu of options and alternative proposed designs.
Based on your performance goals and design limitations we will
develop creative ideas to solve difficult design problems such
as: helping to create a revolutionary new product, improving
on an existing product or avoiding a patent infringement.
Often, requirements from various areas such as marketing, engineering,
and manufacturing overlap or conflict—we can help optimize
the design to fulfill as many needs as possible.
Sometimes the best way to come up with a great solution is to
change the problem. We often suggest creative changes to product
requirements to help a client get the best possible result. |
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