Jansen AG
Optimized design at half the cost
The traditional company Jansen AG, which is located in Oberriet in Switzerland, develops, manufactures, and distributes precision steel tubes and profile steel systems as well as plastic products for the construction industry and industrial applications in general. Jansen AG provides its customers worldwide technologically mature products and system solutions that deliver true added value.
Component Functionality
Corner brackets are used as an assembly aid and operating resource for the pre-assembly of wooden frames in window construction. Corner brackets enable easy positioning and gluing of the wooden frames, which are used for the glazing of wooden/metal windows (see Fig. 1). The corner bracket is a single-use part and is thus treated with much price sensitivity.
Requirements and Solution
The mechanical requirements regarding the component to be manufactured are not critical and can easily be produced using either injection molding or additive manufacturing. The estimated part count of 1,000 to 4,000 corner brackets is at the lower limit for considering an economical injection molding solution. Another downside of injection molding in this case is the long delivery time because a new injection molding tool must be developed first. That is why Jansen AG decided to try the additive manufacturing process offered by prodartis AG.
Jansen AG’s first design version had a material volume of 5 cm3, which was too massive. Because the price will reflect component height along with the number of layers and the part volume in form of material cost, the price target could not be reached, and thus it was decided to do a redesign.
After multiple discussions and optimization rounds, the team defined where and how much material could be saved. For example, the volume was reduced to 3.3 cm3 with crenelated fins, and thanks to the resulting material savings, it was possible to get much closer to the price target. With the integration of an internal honeycomb structure, the corner bracket geometry was reinforced. Another effort for component optimization by Jansen AG via the reduction of centre length by 5 mm cut the part volume further to 2.87 cm3 (see Fig. 2A-2C).
Thanks to all these optimization measures, they were able to save on weight, material, and machine time, which resulted in a reduction in unit cost by 50%. The increased bending resistance thanks to the integration of the honeycomb structure provided a welcome added value.
Multi Jet Fusion Technology (MJF) is ideal for this type of component because of its rather complex geometry. While with MJF the printing of the agent and the heating process of each layer takes the same amount of time regardless of the area that needs to be melted, the layer processing period is very much reliant on the geometry when using the Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) process. In the above-described example of the corner bracket, the cost reduction and material savings would have been undone by using the SLS laser technology because of the longer scanning area and processing time.
Customer’s verdict on this solution
"We have gotten to know prodartis AG as an uncomplicated and very solution-oriented partner in the development of 3D parts. In the end, we were able to optimize our components together with prodartis in such a way to decrease our cost to a minimum without any major loss in terms of function. With this series implementation, we met our cost expectations, and all functions were within our requirements thanks to the optimized implementation.
