A client approached us to reverse engineer a product that he had been importing. His foreign supplier had become unreliable in providing this product. He asked if we could reverse engineer the system, to provide some interchangeability with the imported product but at the same time improve it to provide overall better performance.
We examined the imported equipment and designed a new version utilizing components that were more suitable for the US market.
Manufacturing this machine required the use of our high definition plasma, press brake, CNC punch and Haas CNC mill. Parts were fabricated from a variety of materials including mica, phenolic, tool steel and mil steel.
The control system was PLC based and tied together a regenerative vacuum exhauster, gearmotor, pneumatic cylinder with cut-off blade as well as length measurement of the plastic brick produced.
The parts were designed utilizing SolidWorks which helped reduce the lead time from project launch to the first operational unit.