costs,” Waa said. He noted this is not always the case with every customer. “We were well aware that there
would be a number of design changes along the way, but we wanted to minimize as best we could the design-to-manufacture time frame,” said Chuck DeVore, program engineer, 3M Design & Engineering Solutions division. “We brought Pace Industries into the design process and on to the design team early so we could take advan- tage of their diecast tooling knowl- edge. [Pace engineers provided] the creative solutions and available options that both the prototype tooling and the production tooling would require.”
Keeping Costs Down Cost effectiveness was one of the
team’s major goals. Certain design features were developed to aid in this effort. “To be as cost-conscious as pos-
sible during the prototype process, we designed our tooling with inserts so we could maximize the use of reuseable components and accom- modate the next generation of size configurations,” Waa said. “We were well aware that part geometry was going to change, but we wanted to save time in what we had to rebuild.” Te initial prototype part dies had
a two-cavity family die design, so the team could accommodate the four indi- vidual part numbers, two in each mold. “As production ramps up, we will
move to four-cavity molds where we can make eight parts with each shot,” Waa explained. The light bulb’s design places the
LED driver in a globe and not in the neck of the lamp. This allows air to flow into the lamp just above the base and exit through slots in the upper half of the globe, cooling both
The LED bulb has four diecast parts.
the LEDs and the driver. The LEDs are mounted facing upwards around the circumference of the neck of the lamp.
3M has designed the light guide ONLINE RESOURCE
Search “diecasting” at
www.moderncasting.com for more innovative diecasting stories.
to form the outer structure of the lamp and use total internal reflec- tion technology to distribute light around the globe. The light-extrac- tion elements are created with white paint on the inside of the light guide causing beams to reflect outside the
lamp in an omnidirectional fashion.
Planning Ahead Pace Industries has provided 75,000 sets of diecastings for 3M’s initial test marketing phase. Te company plans to coordinate its tooling schedules to match 3M’s production schedules for each light bulb design and size. “We have been given a target market
price for these parts and are confident we will be on that number,” Waa said.
June 2013 MODERN CASTING | 39
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