Konica Minolta

In the home appliance field, the Home Appliances Manufacturing Business Unit of Matsushita Electric Works, Ltd. continues to offer products for a new lifestyle in the areas of beauty, health, comfort and fun, such as the RealPro Massage Lounger, under the National brand in Japan and the Panasonic brand in other countries.

According to Mitsuo Nakatani, manager of the 3D Modeling Team, IT Planning Group in the company's Supply Chain Management Promotion Division, the key to success in developing products targeting high QCD is the use of 3D development. By analyzing past product development processes, Nakatani found that the main factor causing the development process to get off schedule was related to the appearance of the product. Design, drafting, and mold manufacture are intricately entwined in determining what the end product should look like. Based on this realization, he promoted the necessity of a new specialized organization for 3D development where members from design, drafting, and mold manufacturing areas were assembled to work together. "In order for the 3D organization to function, it is necessary to accurately digitize 3D shapes and create 3D data with proportions identical to those of the finished product," says Nakatani.

"Creating using the head and hands is better than 3D CAD. I think the feeling of size that you get from touching it with your hands is important," says Nakatani. A Konica Minolta VIVID 910 Non-Contact 3D Digitizer is used to generate accurate 3D data of a hand-carved design model. Nakatani continues, "A low-cost, easy-to-use digitizer was considered necessary for the design process. High-priced, moire-type products from other companies were also considered, but the VIVID provided the best-quality polygons, which are important for creating free curves in downstream processes, and also provided sufficient accuracy. It's the best digitizer for reverse engineering from design models created with urethane foam, etc."

The company is also expanding the utilization range for non-contact 3D digitizers. Nakatani says "The area of use is expanding" beyond the design and drafting processes to analysis of components for which no 3D data is available, shape inspection of molds and products, and even to creation of 3D graphics for sales promotion purposes. "The automotive industry has been using 3D scanning for a long time, but we've realized its usefulness for home appliances also." In particular, with VIVID, "there is no need to go to the trouble of sticking on markers to merge multiple scans. Points can be indicated in the software for easy alignment. A rotating stage can also be used to make automatic scanning simple. It's very efficient for scanning design models like our company does." In addition, as a result of the active promotion of 3D development in the design and drafting processes, there are cases in the moldmaking process in which shape approval was granted on just the first try after the mold was completed with no modification, and mass-production could be started. The company also achieved QCD through 3D development using the non-contact 3D digitizer, and Nakatani is convinced that "design quality has greatly improved because the intentions and know how of the designer can be reflected directly."

For more information, visit www.vivid9i.com.