Stage 3 - Design Engineering and Validation
Rehrig Pacific Company’s Design Department employs industry leading Engineers working with state of the art software and hardware that allow them to design product solutions that are innovative and effective.The NX Solid Modeling CAD software that our Design Engineers employ delivers higher efficiency and shorter design cycles. Using this software, our Design Engineers are able to consider more alternatives, evaluate them more thoroughly and get them to market quickly.
Modern modeling software allows our engineers to design product solutions.
Once complete, the final design goes through a technical review process which includes a broader cross section of technical expertise within the company. Those with experience developing, producing and selling similar products are brought together to review the final design and look for potential opportunities to improve the final product prior to tooling.
Rehrig Pacific Design utilizes a Finite Element Analysis(FEA) program called ANSYS. ANSYS supports engineering simulation solutions used to predict how product designs will behave in manufacturing and real-world environments. Its integrated, modular and extensible set of solutions addresses the needs of organizations in a wide range of industries. ANSYS solutions qualify risk, enabling organizations to know if their designs are acceptable or unacceptable — not just that they will function as designed.
Finite Element Analysis (FEA) can predict how products will behave in real-world environments.
Rapid prototyping is the automatic construction of physical objects using solid freeform fabrication. Rapid prototyping takes virtual designs from computer aided design (CAD) or animation modeling software, transforms them into thin, virtual, horizontal cross-sections and then creates each cross-section in physical space, one after the next until the model is finished.
In-house rapid prototyping turns virtual designs into physical models to quickly test functionality.
During the development of certain projects there maybe a need for a physical model of a concept to test functionality, fitment or automation compatibility. In other circumstances the Customer may request to have a prototype simply for presentation purposes.
Several different prototyping methods can be used to create multiple concepts that can be quickly evaluated to check functionality, as well as fit and finish.
There are many options for prototyping concepts including wood, CNC, stereolithography (SLA), selective laser sintering (SLS), cast urethanes, 3D printing, roto-molding and thermoforming. With Rehrig Pacific Company’s experience and knowledge, we are able to development a prototyping solution to fit the needs and costs of a particular project application.
Rehrig Pacific Company employs an in-house Objet 350 3D Printer to quickly evaluate different concepts. By building models of concepts, our Engineers and Customers can have an actual model in hand to check fit and finish, compatibility, functionality and overall concept feasibility. With an in-house 3D printer, Rehrig Pacific Company does not have to rely on the delivery times of outside vendors and can produce prototype models in hours, not days.