Manufacturabilty (DFM)

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Engineering & Development

Product Design & Development

At Kenvox, we've been leading the contract manufacturing industry for over 34 years. Our team of highly skilled engineers has more than 15 years of experience in product engineering, development, and manufacturing. With expertise in plastic, silicone, and metal, we've worked on over 300 complicated NPD projects.

Manufacturabilty (DFM)

Project Background

The founder of this 3D printer company worked as an engineer at GE, Motorola and Makerbot. He was one of the first people in the world who was able to retail a 3D Printer for less than $1,000. The first four generations of the 3D printer were made in New York, until he decided to make the fifth generation in China to save on cost.

This 3D printer is designed for use in the consumer's home. No manual calibration is required, just take it out of the box and it is ready to print.

The item includes parts below:

Plastic parts:

· 27 pcs Metal parts

· External 180w power supply

· 5 pcs Standard components

· 15 pcs PCBs

· 75 pcs

· 110 pcs Screw

· Creates plastic parts up to 8" x 8" x 8“

· Resolution up to 1mm

· 15" x 15.4" x 19.2" footprint (L x W x H)

· On/Off Power Switch

· Weight - 18 lbs

· SoliTouch Technology

Development Process Story

This 3D printer is a complex project and required a sophisticated manufacturing partner who had experience with plastic, silicone, metal and electronics. Kenvox being qualified, took on the project, signed an NDA and a 21-page commercial contract, and began the process of manufacturing the 3D printer.

A project team consisting of 8 members was assembled. The team included a project manager, sales rep, plastic engineer, metal engineer, field application engineer, quality engineer, supply chain engineer, and an electronic engineer. Each one of them having 8 to 10 years of experience in their respective disciplines. Thisensured the full understanding of the requirements and allowed us to provide significant suggestions.

The customer was experienced in product design, but was unfamiliar with the manufacturing process. Some parts of the 3D printer design could not be molded, so Kenvox had to dig deep into our experience to find a solution. We were able to make parts through mass production, saving cost and increasing product lifetime.

This 3D printer includes 113 unique parts, 39 of them had to be outsourced and 23 needed suppliers. Outsourced parts were classified into different categories and our purchasing engineer was tasked to handle this process. Our purchasing engineer made sure the suppliers understood and met the quality standards we were looking for.

Kenvox maintains a high inspection standard to insure and exceed the required quality for a customer's product.

Our customer was unfamiliar with the power supply so it was delegated to Kenvox. The first sample was approved by the customer but internally, we were unsatisfied with the performance. A second sample was made free of charge and accepted by the customer. However, Kenvox remained unsatisfied with the product reliability regarding the heat sink. We ultimately redesigned the power supply with one of our partners and added additional protection circuits as a preventative measure against future reliability issues. Although the cost increased, Kenvox waived the extra charges.

Manufacturing Difficulties

This part is 457 mm long , 368 mm wide , butKenvox successfully molded the parts forrequires a flatness with 1.5 mm max deviatiDespite the very small tolerance for flatassembly.

01
The lid did not close properly because thewiring hamess did not have enough roombetween the back shell and the shell outer lidWe suggested a drawing modification to movethe slot higher and closer to the center toremove the interference.

02
The highlighted bosses must be parallel,maintaining the distance between them. Dueto the nature of this component, the tolerancecontrol was very difficult

03
All belts were suitably tight for accurate andprecise operation.

04
The plastic must slide on the rail freely withprecision to avoid poor quality printing.

05
The design for the belt was not aligned withthe slot, impacting the printer's performance.We notified the customer, resulting in a solution to make the belt align with the slotand improve performance. Kenvox made theappropriate modifications to the customer'sdrawings.

06
The melt tube now has a fixed orientation,allowing the melt tube to determine theorientation of the heating block. Flats wereadded to the barrel/extruder-body interface toensure that the barrel is held in place.

07
we suggested the height of the plate supporttabs to be 4mm to align with the temperedglass and avoid inaccuracies during printing. 4aluminum spacers were added to the plate forconvenient assembly.

08
This part required a high polished surfacewithout any marks or deformations.Afterseveral attempts, our team was able toaccomplish the surface finish, satisfying thecustomer's requirements.

09
Although the customer did not have anyspecific safety requirements, Kenvox wentthrough 4 different samples and improvements even when the customerapproved the sample at each phase.

10
Based on a simple drawing without detailedspecifications for this motor, Kenvox was ableto source from 5 different vendors and sendsamples to our customer. The customerconfirmed the samples every time, but wedecided to test the different samples ourselvesto see which one was the most suitable forproduction.

11
The gears were a challenge to produce. Theteeth had very tight tolerances and the surfacehad to be free of any obstructions for the operation of the part to run smoothly.

12
Kenvox assisted the customer with the finallayout on the PCB and arranged prototypes tobe made.

13
Layout for wire assembly

14
Kenvox was challenged to source these partsbased only on customer provided photographs. Utilizing our sourcing engineersand a wide array of suppliers, we were able tolocate suitable sources.

15
EPS package+ carton box, reliability for shipping

16
Each printer must pass a stringent final inspection process which involves measuring an actual printed test part

17