Rawlplugmay have over 100 years of experience within the power tool market, including the development of the world’s first wall plug, but the firm is always looking for opportunities to make its R&D projects faster, cheaper, and more efficient.
In the past, the company’s tooling workshop conducted product QA testing via outsourced 3D printed mock-ups, before injection molding its end-use products. However, by switching to in-house prototyping and adopting烧结’s丽莎专业system, Rawlplug has recently been able to ramp up its design iteration process, and rapidly test anchors, fasteners, and fixings that are more representative of the final product.
“I can confidently say that nowadays 3D printing is one of the most important avenues for prototyping,” said Dominika Zarowna, Design Engineer at Rawlplug. “Due to the fact that we are able to check certain solutions on a printout, we need to create much fewer prototype forms. It saves a considerable amount of time, both for us and the tooling workshop.”
“我们有FDM和SLA 3D打印机的经验，但是要打印许多小元素，例如墙壁插雷电竞app下载头，SLS是最好的技术。”
从砌体到SLS创新
早在1910年，英国发明家约翰·约瑟夫·罗林斯（John Joseph Rawlings）与英国博物馆将电气配件贴在其建筑物的墙壁上，以一种不引人注目的方式。为了实现这一目标，Rawlings创建了一个小型且固定的固定装置，并为其昵称为“ Rawlplug”，但现在被称为“墙壁塞”。
可以说，罗林斯的发明构成了现代固定行业的基础，直到今天，他的遗产通过他的公司仍然带有Rawlplug绰号。在过去的111年中，该公司一直在建造广泛的产品组合，这些产品组合的坐骑，关节和电动工具已经部署在建筑物中，从Burj Khalifa到Wembery Stadium。
In that time, Rawplug’s prototyping workflow has also come on leaps and bounds, moving from traditional manual production into 3D printing, but until recently, the process had been outsourced to an external vendor, adding unnecessary cost, complexity and ultimately lead times to the R&D of its new products.
Zarowna解释说：“当我第一次成为新员工时，我们曾经将印刷品外包给第三方。”“这通常花费大量时间。我们需要的是我们自己的3D打印机，以便将等待时间降至最低。同时，我们正在寻找新技术。”
A cost-friendly SLS entry-point
一段时间以来，Rawplug的设计工程团队希望在内部进行原型制作，但是采用高级SLS 3D打印机所需的初始支出有效地将其定价。但是，从那时起，该公司发现Sinterit的Lisa Pro代表了更紧凑，更具成本效益的替代品，可在其专用的工具研讨会上安装该系统。
利用他们的经济SLS系统,罗威套管engineers are now able to design new products and innovate upon existing ones at a more rapid pace than before, thus providing the company with the agility to quickly pivot, change design philosophy and continue to compete in what has become a crowded tooling marketplace.
烧结’s Lisa Pro is also supported by awide material portfolio, enabling the team to switch between powders and create products with vastly different functionalities in the same machine. Given that many end-use parts are produced using polypropylene (PP), the firm has found烧结’s new PP polymer是一个西文pecially useful prototyping tool, in particular when it comes to making final part-quality mock-ups.
Focusing on quality over quantity
Before Rawlplug adopted the Lisa Pro, the team wanted to expedite their product design process, but not at the expense of part quality. As a result, prior to acquiring the system, the engineers put together a comprehensive test model, that assessed its accuracy and ability to incorporate nested elements, which wouldn’t have been possible using other machines.
Since passing its initial assessments, Rawlplug has opted to install the machine, deploying it to produce around 95% of its products, and only outsourcing larger parts once or twice a year. Additionally, the firm has found that the system yields a reduction in the number of iterations needed to perfect each product’s design, allowing it to bring them to market more quickly and gain an edge over its competitors.
“Lisa Pro is not quite the quickest 3D printer, but for us, that is not a big concern, because we reduced the waiting time for prints from 2 weeks to 2 days,” added Zarowna. “We have worked out a system, where we start printing on a Friday afternoon and the prints are already waiting for us on Monday when we come to work.”
By collecting a weeks’ worth of projects from its designers, and producing multiple concepts at once, the company has also managed to streamline and minimize the cost of its overall R&D operation. What’s more, the quality of Rawlplug’s SLS-printed prototypes puts them on a par with injection molded parts, meaning that the firm can test their performance to the limit, knowing that if they pass, so will the final product.
Ultimately, Zarowna concluded that Rawlplug’s market-leading product range is a result of the “good design” and “thoroughly thought-through testing” enabled by its Lisa Pro system, a machine which has also allowed Sinterit clients like腐烂技术to加快其原型制作过程，毫无疑问，将来会以类似的方式使他人受益。
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Featured image shows a cork board with several different Rawlplug mountings and fixtures attached to it. Image via Sinterit.
