This is a little experiment in Silo and Solidworks via t-splines

http://www.simpsonsmovie.com/main.html
Me as a Simpsons avatar!

Solidworks Overmold Technique:
Today I will share a really cool method for designing overmold. I had been using a pretty intense method of offseting surfaces in and out and knitting them together with a bridging surface (most likely a trimmed surface extrude) This method is a little more stable because it relies on more Solid features, which tend to have less problems with relationships.




So this is your generic main body

Extrude the profile of your overmold without merging the feature

Offset the orange surfaces out by 0.5mm (It is hard to see it here)

Cut the overmold profile extrude with the offset surfaces

Hide the large body and the surface offset. This makes it a little easier to deal with the many bodies

So now you only have the overmold bodies

In this case Shell the first overmold body1.2mm

Shell the second overmold body.


Make a copy of both bodies with the Move/Copy feature.
Dont specify any movement or rotation. Just check Copy

This is what it should like when you pick any of those copies.



Now use the Combine feature to subtract (yeah-real intuitive isnt it?) the overmold bodies from the main body.

This is the body after the combine operation. The overmold bodies are subtracted from the main volume.
Note that this command consumes the overmold bodies that were used in the Combine feature.

Use the move face command to create the reveal line between the overmold and the orange plastic. This reveal line prevents the formation of flash and covers over any slight misalignment. They also serve to outline the overmold area graphically.

Show the copied overmold bodies. Nice!

Note that the shell of the main body now maintains uniform wall thickness. This prevents part warpage.

http://picasaweb.google.com/thomas.parel/VineyardLogos

These are some logo concepts for the church that I attend. More work will be added. If you have any thoughts feel free to add comments or send me images or paint-overs that you think could work.

http://www.glumbert.com/media/kineticsculpture
Now thats inspiring

I am Plastic- Awesome Inspiration from Toys
Very Nice

I just discovered that google does patent searches as well. No excuses now for a thorough patent searchHere is a quick search that I did of patents under my name http://www.google.com/patents?q=Thomas+Parel&as_brr=1

To create breakthrough products you need to observe and ask questions. Lazy ways of doing this are observing comments and usage on sites like flickr or epinions.com, howthingswork.com or even Consumer Reports. You are stymied here though by the fact that the internet and its usage might not be ubiquitous and you might be observing people who are not your core consumers.

Whose problem are you solving? Just because a solution does not solve a user problem does not mean that it is a bad design. There are many stake holders in the product development process- retailers, shipping, manufacturing, environmental concerns etc in ADDITION to the end-product and how it is used. Many of these concerns are not as evident but can help the success of a product from behind the scenes. Japanese Kaizen development process of incremental development is a great example of fine-tuning as any aspects of the automobile as feasible. Shaving pennies and time, though not spectacular can be instrumental in developing a product with longevity.

Kaizen only works once you have a breakthrough idea or product. You need to have a great product that solves the problem of a sufficient number of people in an economic way for the retailer and the manufacturer. The best way is to hit the streets (or wherever your consumers will be) and do a little guerilla research. Dress well, Print out a little badge for yourself stating your university or organization affiliation (Actually this works for me because the people who use my products tend to be outdoors). Try to find users where they use your products. Start with friends and family and then network out. Try to observe and RECORD EVERYTHING. DONT generate ideas-dont start to work to a solution when you dont know the entire picture.

Truthfully I hate research. It makes me very uncomfortable talking to people I dont know who are likely very busy, and likely to mistrust your motives. But it is very important and needs to be done

Rough Solidworks model and graphics. I was really wishing for developable surfacing in Solidworks on this project.

These are some sketches that I did for a hardshell backpack design.

This was some work that was done for Genometri LLC.
www.genometri.com

Hehe- this brings back memories, complete with old address and phone number. I did this about 6 years ago in Maya. The concept was a cell phone that draped like a necklace. It was good to see the Apple iphone implement the idea of a touch screen interface (which I think every design student has come up with)

Here are the files to my presentation at Solidworks World.
Please navigate to the page by clicking on the link. This should work.

My kind of sketches