Safety is of utmost importance in mines. Therefore Electro Diesel Group (EDG) wanted to develop proximity awareness technology, which senses vehicle and people movement, in order to warn about danger and take over vehicle controls to avoid collisions.
EDG approached cStream to develop the technology and Technimark was asked to do the industrial design of the enclosures. One of these enclosures was for a mobile unit, which contractors use when entering mines. It is connected to their vehicles to integrate it into the system and radio network.
The main enclosure of the unit is made from machined aluminium and needed to be covered with a rubber enclosure. But the cost, based on the limited quantities required, did not justify an injection mould.
Technimark requested the Product Development Technology Station (PDTS) to further their development and to be able to supply a final product that is of injection moulding quality, but without the high cost involved.
For this purpose the PDTS tested the capability of the modular mould base concept in order to manufacture a mould or cover of thermoplastic urethane. This features large undercuts to fit snuggly over the device.
Products like these are conventionally very expensive to produce with injection moulding. This is due to the difficulty of removing the product from the mould as it often requires human intervention or in a high production environment even robots.
To reduce tooling costs the PDTS designed a mould to produce the covers in low numbers in order to test the economic viability.
The first 500 units were delivered at a unit cost and of a quality that could not have been achieved with any other manufacturing method. The PDTS therefore assisted to validate the longevity of the mould and test the commercial lifespan of the product.