Technology That Will Change The Aftermarket (2)
January 27th, 2012
By: Brad S. – Project Manager
If you are anything like me you were left with a little frustration last week not knowing how the project turned out. Well, read on and decide for yourself…
Recap: Our customer had the front end of a go-kart continually break, requiring other owners of the go-kart like himself to purchase an entire new front end. Our customer wanted to fix that problem and produce a solution that was more reliable than the O.E.M product. We 3D scanned the front end to design a fix to their problem. That was the easy part. Next, we taxed ourselves with the challenge of improving the O.E.M. design. With a little CAD magic from our team we came up with two new designs (in addition to minor modifications of the original concept).
The Result: We created fenders with incorporated headlights (left below) and a F1 styled front end (right below). Our customer does not need to sell entirely different front-ends either because the style options are easily interchangeable depending on personal preference and just require unbolting the end pieces!
What’s Next?: Now that the data for these parts is in our system, we have the ability to quickly scan and design other parts to coincide with any these existing parts, making the opportunities to manipulate or change the style of this front end limitless.
Conclusion: We could have made the simple fix to the front-end that the client requested and they probably would have been very pleased. However, we are always looking at how we can improve designs. With 3D scanning and additive technologies we are able to improve the product development life cycle. The client now has a much more stylish and not to mention more durable front end with interchangeable options. It is important to not just create products, but to add value.
One last thing: In case you were wondering how we actually fixed the broken part, you can see the before and after images below. The image on the left shows the broken part and the image on the right shows the designed fix for it. Quick, simple and very cost effective.
