Industrial Design: How to Avoid Plastic Pimples on Cosmetic Parts
Remember the old idea of “concurrent engineering?”
Although a fad years ago, the method has
become part of how we operate today. You can
credit concurrent engineering and its emphasis on
thinking about manufacturing up front for ideas
such as balancing the cost of a mold and where to
gate a part.
For instance, we recently helped work on a computer-
housing design for a manufacturer of telecommunications
products. The company was on a
tight budget and had tried to streamline processes
as much as possible. So designers were absent during
initial tooling discussions for manufacturing.
The upshot: A front bezel on the housing, an important
cosmetic component, had a gate mark in
the form of a large plastic pimple. Of course, 20-20
hindsight showed that including design from the
beginning would have avoided the whole mess.
It’s also wise to get design talking with manufacturing
from the start to deal with color and
finish issues. Products might get painted, molded
in color, textured, anodized, plated, vacuum metallized,
powder coated, or silk screened, to name a
few techniques. Good design
anticipates costs and risks associated
with each method.
But good design goes beyond
anticipation of manufacturing
issues. Say, for example,
you are going to paint
an assembly intended as a
consumer product. When
the device is handheld or will see fair amounts
of physical interaction on a daily basis, consider
molding the part in a color close to that of the
painted finish. Brand evaluation often suffers
when products fail to meet consumer expectations.
Ever dropped a cell phone, scratching the
metallic paint to find a different color plastic
underneath? This makes the phone look cheap,
to say the least. Better to anticipate wear and
tear.
—Tim Nugent
Tim Nugent is the Design Director at Pulse
Global LLC in Santa Ana, Calif. (pulse-global.com). The firm focuses on industrial design
for medical devices, industrial equipment,
consumer electronics, and other products and
has worked for everything including startups to
Fortune 100 companies. Got a question about
industrial design? You can reach Tim at tim.
nugent@pulse-global.com.