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Aran Research & Development
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Aran cuts design time by 50%, strengthens competitive advantage with its Eden™ 3-D printing system
Aran
Research & Development serves the local high-tech industry and
international clients in the fields of medical and security products,
printing equipment electronic packaging, agricultural products and
numerous other tools and machines. Aran is the largest product, design
and development house in Israel with more than 70 experts in design,
engineering, prototyping, mold-making and other fields. Aran offers its
customers a full service from product design through to pre-production.
As
Aran’s typical customers’ markets are fast-moving and cost-sensitive,
the development house constantly needs to seek for ways to reduce
design time, costs and enhance its service.
Accurate models enable early-stage design verification
“We
needed technology that would allow us to check and illustrate design
for our customers,” says Kobi Jakobi, Engineering Manager of the
Plastic and Electronic Packaging Department at Aran. “The Eden350V
allows us to evaluate the physical shape, assembly procedure,
ergonomics and industrial design of the product as soon as we finish
designing it on our CAD system.” This means the team can detect
engineering errors in a very short time – virtually as soon as a design
milestone is completed and long before the tooling stage when changes
can be more costly.
Boaz Drori, Design Studio Manager adds. “The
quality of models we get from the Eden system is amazing. The fine
details, high accuracy and smooth surfaces all come together to create
incredibly realistic models.”
The Eden 3-D printing system is a real breakthrough in the world of design…
The
quality of models we get from it is amazing Boaz Drori Design Studio
Manager, Aran Research & Development. Other reasons that Aran
chose Objet’s Eden350V include its ease of use, high reliability, and
cost effectiveness. The Eden system enables Aran to build even large
models quickly, to create smoothly curved edges in which the 16-micron
layers are invisible to the naked eye, and to easily finish and paint
the models to emulate the look and feel of the final product. The fact
that the materials come in non-contact sealed containers, with easy
switching between the different materials, was also attractive to Aran.
Saving time and facilitating communication All these advantages add up to significant time savings.
“Overall,
we’ve seen a 50% reduction in our design time as a result of using the
Eden system,” says Drori. General time to market is now 20% less than
it was before Aran installed the Eden350V.
In addition to
speeding the internal design process, using the Eden350V has enabled
Aran to improve communications with its customers. “We can now print a
few different model prototypes to present the customer, which gives us
a competitive advantage,” Drori adds.
This drastically reduces
misunderstandings and enables the customer and the Aran team to agree
more quickly on design changes. Furthermore, Aran’s customers are able
to insert the electronics and other parts into the Eden-produced models
and use the “device” for user testing and pre-marketing activities.
Conceptual and functional evaluation of a mobile phone design
A
recent project to design a completely new-look mobile phone for Emblaze
is just one example of the many projects on which the Eden350V system
has proved its value. After developing sketches of several design
options, one concept was developed into a 3-D computer simulation and
from there was designed in CAD using SolidWorks. The file was then
transferred to STL format and imported into Objet Studio, the
management software used with all Eden series printers.
The phone
model was produced on the Eden350V using the FullCure720 Transparent
material to enable immediate evaluation of fit, form and function.
Several additional identical models of the phone shells were then built
on a single build tray, for feasibility testing. For this more advanced
evaluation, the transparent photopolymer models were painted in glossy
colors to give a realistic look and feel. Aran then inserted electronic
components and the models were presented to focus groups, enabling
Emblaze to get valuable, early-stage market feedback on their new-look
phones.
Improving the workflow and the working environment
In terms of the main advantages of using the Eden350V, Aran says the system enables them to:
- Gain an impression of the industrial design and detect errors before the molds are manufactured
- Avoid the need to make adjustments for CNC
- Reduce the costs associated with mold quotations
- Make models of any size and on a large scale, by combining smaller parts into an assembly with high-resolution precision
- Easily offer a high-quality finish and a high degree of color similarity with the target product
- Produce highly detailed parts without adding production time
- Achieve smooth surfaces on which the layer steps are barely visible
- Easily and quickly switch between materials of different flexibility levels and colors
With thanks to Aran and Emblaze, who kindly helped Objet create this case study.
 Download Aran Research & Development brochure - A-4
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