2009 Contest Winners

Entry: Foot Spa

Designer: Jeff Wollenzien

Company: Shape Products Inc.

Description: Single wall foot spa with integrated contoured interior with ergonomic foot/toe wells.

How SolidWorks helped: SolidWorks helped to maintain our design intent especially with the integrated rendering capabilities.

Design Time Saved: Reduced design time by 70%

Product Quality Improvement: Reduced errors by 30%

Design Cost Saving: Reduced cost by 20%

Design tools: SolidWorks, PhotoWorks

Honourable Mention #2

Entry: Tilt & Recline Bariatric Positioning Chair

Designer: Travis Clarke

Company: Broda Seating

Description: The tilt & recline bariatric chair is an extremely comfortable and functional piece of equipment for longterm care and rehabilitation of obese patients with a 500lb weight capacity. The chair was designed to reduce caregiver injuries related to handling obese patients while offering maximum safety and positioning options. It uses a hydraulic cylinder for seat tilt actuated by a foot-pump to eliminate the need for manual lifting. The chair can accommodate patients of all shapes and sizes with built-in adjustment for: Seat Width, Seat Depth, Seat Height, Back Length, Legrest length and Armrest Height.

How SolidWorks helped: Solidworks was used for every aspect of the project, from concept design development, model reviews, motion refinement, structural analysis with simulation, weld fixtures/tooling, manufacturing drawings and customer support with eDrawings. New graphics, rendering and animation options made it easy for me to convey my design to the Sales & Marketing team eliminating the need for a "touchy-feely" initial prototype that is often required in the consumer product field. Simulation allowed me to "get it right the first time". By analyzing multiple options virtually, I was actually able to build a single physical test prototype that had no failures and required zero re-work. two full prototypes eliminated!

Design Time Saved: from 2 months to 3 weeks (two prototypes eliminated, no re-work)

Product Quality Improvement: Designer structural confidence up 100%

Design Cost Saving: Saved over $15,000 in design, communication and physical parts on this chair alone.

Design tools: SolidWorks, SolidWorks Simulation, PhotoWorks

Honourable Mention #3

Entry: Urban design

Designer: Laurentiu Popescu

Company: Interior Manufacturing Group

Description: Recreational areas benches. At the border between industrial product and art, these benches can easily be considered intriguing relaxing pieces of urban furniture or exquisite art objects. Made out of bronze, time will let an interesting imprint on them conferring an elevated aspect to the location. Generations of people will take their pictures on these benches which later can become a staple of the cities where they reside.

How SolidWorks helped: By using complex surfacing everything became possible. SolidWorks makes it really easy to work with such complex surfaces; and PhotoView 360 brings everything alive.

Design tools: SolidWorks, PhotoView 360

Honourable Mention #4

Entry: 12 1/4" Manufactured Drop Axle

Designer: Jeremy Marissen

Company: Ingersoll Axles

Description: The design of this axle is for 12" brakes and 17" wheels with a full 6" drop, it can be manufactured for up to 130" track lengths and used in on and off road applications. With the drop extending the full length between the brakes it allows for the suspension to be mounted to the dropped axle tube, therefore allowing for the design of extremely low deck trailers. By using this combination of 17" wheels and a manufactured drop axle, trailer operators are able to carry loads that might not be possible with standard axles.

How SolidWorks helped: By using SolidWorks it has allowed us to check for clearance issues and be able to fit parts together more accurately and in tighter, smaller spaces. By doing this it has enabled us to achieve greater load capacities because we were able to assemble parts closer together and retain functionality. We have also been able to improve on the images we show in our brochures and other information that goes to our customers.

Design Time Saved: Using SolidWorks over CADKEY has reduced design time for our axles immensely, and in some cases as much as 50%.

Design tools: SolidWorks

Honourable Mention #5

Entry: Tunnel Runner TR-2LB 1MB

Designers: Rob Whiteford & Paul Dupuis

Company: Mining Technologies International

Description: Two boom drill jumbo for tunnelling applications. It is able to drill a heading 43' wide, by 28' high. It can drill two 3" diameter holes 15' deep in 90 seconds. A centre mounted man-basket is used for installing roof bolts. It carries its own air compressor and water pump. The machine trams using a diesel engine, and drills using hydraulics. In tunnelling applications, the drilling face is much larger than a typical underground drill face requiring extensive modifications to our standard jumbo.

How SolidWorks helped: With a 4 month deadline to design and create manufacturing and assembly drawings to build the machine, SolidWorks and SolidWorks Simulation were essential for the short engineering lead time. The design work included a new boom mount, front frame, operator's cabin (with A/C and heat) with ROPS Certification, rear frame and all new powertrain components (Engine, Transmission, Axles).

With the help of SolidWorks' easy to use 3D tools for modeling, a concept and final product for manufacturing was quickly developed with a large emphasis on the cab layout and ergonomics. The visual aspect of Solidworks helped eliminate interferences and streamlined assemblies. Along with SolidWorks Simulation, all weldments were tested and refined before manufacturing began.

Design Time Saved: With the new Front frame/Boom Mount/Cab configuration, many variations were tested in SolidWorks Simulation until an acceptable design was achieved. Not only did this save weeks in engineering time, but in assembly and testing where most problems appear. Not having to repair or re-work poorly designed frames saves on assembly time and cost.

Product Quality Improvement: Quality improvements were seen at the manufacturing and assembly stages on the project.  All the major weldment were fabricated will little to no engineering input or assistance.  This is an indication of the accuracy that can be achieved with the SolidWorks modeling and drawing packages.  At the assembly stage of the build, all the parts fit as planned with no un-expected interferences or alignment problems.  The overall appearance of the machine has greatly improved as well.

Design Cost Saving: As mentioned above, with properly designed parts and systems, the manufacturing and assembly of the machine has largest impact on savings.  Not having to re-work ill-fitting parts saves costs in every aspect of the build. At the end the project, there were very few drawing updates due to design issues.

Design tools: SolidWorks Premium, SolidWorks Simulation