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Electronic Sensing Head

Client:
TKT Engineering Inc. - Surrey, B.C.

Client's Request:
To lower the manufacturing cost of a successful product in their portfolio, the sensing head, and to produce a small batch of 20 units.

KLN's Contribution:
The particular product, a measurement tool that facilitates the alignment of a series of rollers in saw mills, has been marketed by TKT since a few years ago quite successfully. Apart from requiring a significant amount of hand assembly time, practical experience suggested that it would be helpful in many cases to see the indicator lamp and the dial indicator from more than a small viewing angle, which due to space constraints in industrial installations, is a limitation often encountered by service personnel.

KLN's engineering team updated the design to incorporate a CNC machined clam shell body, a set of 4 LED indicators, and a swivelling dial indicator. While the number and complexity of custom machined parts remained more or less the same, by using a printed circuit board to replace the former hand wiring of elements, manufacturing labour was saved. Adding a grounding wire with alligator clip made electrical connections easier in cases where the instrument gets bolted onto an insulating part of a machine frame.

Details and Outcome:
When evaluating product design, short term and long term considerations apply. The re-design of this product succeeded in lowering manufacturing cost without presently increasing costs in tooling and jigs in any significant way. The improvements in styling were blended with improvements in utility, dominantly evident by the swivelling dial indicator and the multi-directional set of LED lights. For the future, the design is now such that an increase in sales volume might justify and allow a reduction in the manufacturing cost with a only moderate investment in injection mould tooling in return for a significant reduction in parts cost.

Custom measurement and sensing equipment can save a lot of time and improve measurement consistency. Please call KLN to design your measurement device.

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Contract Design Engineering, Prototyping, and Manufacturing Services

KLN KLEIN Product Development Inc.
(Located in the Lower Mainland, Vancouver Area)
Langley, B.C., CANADA
Phone: (604) 530-1491
Website: www.klnklein.com

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