CarMask: Industrial Paper Cutter
Titoma was asked by Logimask, a French start-up company, to design and manufacture a system to automatically produce made-to-measure masks for car windows. The paper masks
are used to mask the windows of a car when it is spray painted. This system
saves the body shop a lot of time over the traditional way of masking the
windows by hand.
The client had first
asked a design firm in France to develop a proof-of-concept prototype, which
got a good reception in tradeshows but the price was too high, which
basically made the whole concept unviable. The future of the whole company
was at stake.
The client then
came to Titoma for a turnkey product development and manufacturing solution.
We applied our Design For Asian Manufacturing principles, together with some
old fashioned value engineering, to drastically reduce the unit cost. We took
the following steps:
1. Source cutter
from China instead of Japan
Instead of the
US$ 4,500 paper cutter from Japan we selected a much cheaper cutter from China, and worked with the Chinese factory to modify the unit to meet the required
specifications.
2. Custom
software development
Whereas the proof
of concept was driven by a simple AutoCAD application on top of
Windows, we developed instead a very customer friendly Graphical User
Interface running on Linux, saving a lot of money on both software and
hardware requirements.
3. Low cost
Industrial PC
We replaced the
Pentium based Home PC used in the prototype with a more resilient industrial
standard PC to better meet the requirements of the job, and save money at the
same time because a Via(TM) based solution was more than able to handle our application's low
computing power requirements.
4. Improved
User Interface
The CRT monitor,
mouse and keyboard were replaced with an LCD monitor with touch screen,
so with a stylus the system became very easy to use, even for people with
paint on their fingers.
5. Test and
enhance cutter performance
After a lot of
testing of different functional prototypes we decided to add a motor to the
paper roll to assure smoother performance.
6. Custom
Power supply
To avoid a mess
of power cables we developed a custom power supply which powers the
paper cutter, the Industrial PC and the LCD monitor, whilst offering improved
protection against irregular electricity supply in target markets such as Spain and Morocco. We also made it a universal power supply so the system can be sold in the US as well as Europe without having to go through another round of safety approvals.
7. Industrial
Design suitable for low quantity production
To make the
whole system look good we designed a stand that is nice looking, yet cheap to
manufacture in China with the initially small batch sizes of only 200 units. Instead
of injection molding we used metal parts and glass fiber panels.
The all new
system was presented to much acclaim at the Equipauto automotive tradeshow
in Paris in November 2005. The result of Titoma's efforts is a much better looking and functioning product than before, which costs a
fraction of the original proof of concept.
 Please contact Case Engelen at Titoma for more information, a quick quote, or other inquiries:
Email: CarMask: Industrial Paper Cutter Design & Manufacturing in Taiwan
Telephone +886 2 2727 2089 |
