Sometimes a company has a product that either hasn’t been fully developed or is impractical to move around for sales presentations. Whatever the reason it is possible to produce a scale model prototype of the product that can be carried by sales teams to and from sales meetings.
I worked with pharmaceutical equipment company Eppendorf to develop a prototype of one of their large plant equipment pieces that the sales team would use.
The Brief
The project started with an initial briefing and introduction to the machine, taking measurements, photos and getting an understanding of how the prototype would be used by the sales team. The challenge was to design and produce a visual display that could be disassemble easily, and would fit into elevators and the back of a standard passenger car. The sales team planned to use them as displays in customers offices and work areas as a discussion piece. The unit had to be 100% to scale of the actual device to visually communicate the size to the customers and give them a sense of the apce occupied by it, all without the added complication of actually moving a the delicate intrument.
The Process
Brief
With the brief and measurements I worked with an industrial designer to develop the physical design and how it would all work. Usuing rare earth magnets embedded at the joints the design would allow for easy assembly and dissasembly by the sales reps while out in the field.
First Concept 3d Render
The physical design was then turned into a 3d concept design render, which was supplied to the client as a pdf for approval in much the same way that digital proofs of traditional printing or graphic design is done. This stage is about wokring out the physical design only.
Second Concept 3d Render with Graphic Design
After the physcial design is approved, the next stage is to add the graphic design elements so we can see what the finished unit might look like.
Physical Prototype
Once the graphic design render is approved the next step it the first physical we produce a prototype. Generally the first physcial prototype is about 75% correct. Some issues don’t become apparent until the unit is brought into reality. Things that look fine on the screen, simply aren’t. The prototype is presented to the customer warts and all.
With this project we picked up some things that could be improved with the colour output, and the print quality that ultimately required some graphic design of the printed elemeents. This was also the first time for the sales team to have a look, and they made a couple of great suggestions for how they would use it, and then how the design could support them to do that.
Third 3d Render
I took the adjustments back to the industrial designer, to implement and we did another round of 3d render approvals. Once that was signed off, it was ready for production.
The Product
Based on the final usage kappa board was the clearly the best choise for materials. Kappa board is light and rigid material similar to foamboard used in picture framing, but much stronger. It has a strong surface coating of thick paper, which has great material toughness that can tolerate a lot of repeated folding. This characteristic was important because the unit was expected to folded and unfolded a lot of times. One case study of kappboard in Japan saw a pop up display that was carreid to a from on the Tokyo train system, and used over 600 times before failure. To allow the rigid material to fold, it is a matter of cutting through the material to the surface, but not through the surface, this creates a slit in teh material, and allows it to fold.
Kappa board can also be direct printed by high-resolution flatbed printers and then cut to shape using flatbed cutting tables that are highly precise. The precision of the cutting tables would support the complex shapes that would be required.
The different parts were held together by rare earth magnets embeded in the material, allowing for it to be easily assembled and disassembled, and sit firmly together.
For this project we also used 3d printing to create replicas of the highly specialised attachments that the actual machine had. Eppendorf was able to supply 3d CAD files for these attachments.
With the proofs approved by the Eppendorf team, we went to production and delivered them a few weeks later.
The Service
The project was to not only provide the client with a physical display, but also to allow them to carry it from their showroom, or car, into their customers office space for display. This meant that we needed to proved a box that the disassembled unit could be safely moved around in.
The deisgn for this began once we had the first prototype and could see what we were working with. One od the experience production team members basically snatched it away from the industrial designer and told him that he would design the box, and the designer could go back to his desk until he was done. This guy put together the box design very quickly, then told the deisgner what he would need to make it better.
The next challenge was assemblnig it. It was easy to assemble when you knew how, but getting to the part where you know how required some extra work. I put together a short insuction video showing how to assemble the unit, and linked that via a QR code printed on the box so that the final user could quickly and easily access the video while in the field.