Dyson

Some ten years ago, when James Dyson and his design team developed the Dual Cyclone vacuum cleaner, they revolutionised a whole industry and changed the way people think about the design of domestic electrical appliances. Today, at the Dyson facility in Wiltshire, traditional industrial design techniques and state-of-the-art CAD/CAM technology have combined for the development of the company’s latest vacuum cleaners.

In the company’s research and development unit, Solid Edge is used during the design development and subsequent prototyping and prove-out of new components and systems before they go forward for use in a new product.

Today, although Dyson’s designers still produce traditional cardboard and foam models during the early stages of the product design process, those same designers also use Solid Edge to develop 3D models of the individual components and to model sub-assemblies and assemblies. This way, a complete and unambiguous 3D solid model of the complete machine is built up, containing not just geometric data but also data required for production purposes. This forms the product master model.

Apart from the ability to model components in 3D, which gives a much better feel as to what they look like in reality, the assembly modelling facilities within the system are among the most important to the product development engineers at Dyson.

The introduction of 3D solid modelling techniques based on the master model concept has made a major impact on the way Dyson approaches the product development process and on the way it communicates both internally and with its suppliers.

New components and systems are developed and proved in research and development and the 3D CAD files generated during this process are available for use directly by engineering in the detailed engineering design process. Assembly modelling enables checks for fit and function to be made early in the development process, thereby avoiding the need for costly downstream remedies. The 3D master model data is used in the production of prototype parts and of mould tools and finished components, with a two-way flow of information ensuring that everyone is aware of the current status, while the same data is also used for the company’s MRP system and to produce assembly instructions for the shop-floor and illustrations for user instruction leaflets.

The effects of this at Dyson are a right-first-time development environment in which data is re-used rather than re-invented. This has resulted in a reduced time-scale for the overall design-to-manufacture process accompanied by a greater confidence in the quality of the finished product - and a growing share of the domestic electrical appliances market.