eNews

Giving Skiing a Lift

CAD/CAM technology helps company find its mojo

Turning a vision into reality with CAD/CAM software meant more time on the ski slopes for a manufacturer and its customers.

A basic desire to ski longer, even when it is physically tiring, provided the inspiration for Owen Eastwood, a British inventor, to come up with the idea and design for the ski~mojo. The device is a precision engineered piece of sporting equipment that connects to the back of ski boots and straps to shins, supporting spring-loaded arms alongside the thighs. The ski~mojo supports up to 30 percent of upper body weight and acts as a shock absorber for legs, enhancing control and balance on the slopes.

“The ski~mojo reduces fatigue, thus providing the ability to ski all day. It's like the power steering on a car,” Eastwood said. “Skill is still needed to ski, but the ski~mojo just makes it less tiring.”

The project was years in development before Kinetic Innovations Ltd., South Yorkshire, UK, Eastwood’s manufacturer, approached Senior & Dickson Ltd, Doncaster, UK, product design and molding specialists.

“We wanted to keep the entire development and manufacture UK-based, so it was important to find an innovative and understanding partner,” Eastwood said.

Using the CAD/CAM technology from Vero Software, Gloucestershire, England, Karl Freeman, design engineer at Senior, produced early CAD and STL models for rapid prototyping.

“It was important to get a feel for the product before moving into the production stages,” Freeman said.

“We’ve been using Vero’s program, VISI, for nearly three years and the software has never proved itself more than on this project,” he said. “Using a combination of VISI Modeling, VISI Mould and VISI Machining, we streamlined our entire design process. With only one working environment, there are no issues with data transfer. Anyone from the drawing office or shop floor can open a design and extract the information.

“Within a 12-week time frame, we produced full surfaced models, complete electrode sets, and 11 full production mold tools with four major tool modifications,” he said.

Built on Teamwork

The development of the ski~mojo has been a collaboration of aesthetic design, functionality, and manufacturability.

The first design included aluminum die cast parts, but to reduce weight and cost, glass-filled polyamide – GFPA – is now being used.

The bottom straps and seat have been changed from sewn fabric to polyurethane and the calf support bracket has been redesigned with the geometry being twisted by an extra 10° for an improved body fit,” Freeman said.

Once the CAD data has been prepared, it is passed to the shop floor for toolpath creation.

“We have an experienced toolroom,” Chris Hodgson, technical director of Senior & Dickson, said. “We run multiple seats of VISI Machining on the shop floor next to the Hurco Ultimax machines and let the machinists generate their own toolpaths.”

The operators are closest to the action and this lets them make live decisions and have the biggest impact on machining productivity. Since the introduction of VISI, the company saw a time reduction of about 30 percent and improved the quality of its tool design.

“Without all of these improvements, it would have been impossible to remain competitive in our demanding market place,” Hodgson said.

Commenting on the decision to work closely with Senior & Dickson, Eastwood said Senior offered what he was looking for – a one-stop service from product design through to molding and full assembly.

The molding shop contains 12 Negri Bossi molding machines with clamping force ranges from 70 to 250 tons, as well as a number of pick-and-place robots.

“Senior & Dickson removed the pain from design and manufacture, exactly what the ski~mojo does for skiers,” Eastwood said.

Want more information? Click below.
Vero Software