Vacuum powered holder for BMW M-Serie shift knob lens

Vacuum lens holder – 58% scrap decreasing by TT ENGINEERING

One of our customers gave me a BMW M-series shift knob lens and he told he did not have any 3D model about this lens but he asked me to design and manufacture a vacuum lens holder device for 12 position tampon printing machine.

So first of all we had to draw the 3D model of the lens that was not an easy job because as all the car components this one is also bounded by free surfaces (experts can ask why the hell we did not use a 3D scanner – we did but it has not gave the proper model). After having the perfect 3D model of the lens, we designed an adjustable and repositionable vacuum powered simple device that was fitted and used for months now.

This device – as everything designed & manufactured by TT Engineering – has a full technical documentation and spare parts catalogue. So, the customer can order and we can easily supply spare parts to provide a carefree operation of the lens holding device that is very important in the car industry. So, a few words about the results we managed to achieve. With the original lens holders, the scrap percentage was 70% that was a huge amount.

We managed to decrease the scrap percentage to 12% on this printing machine that is a very good result. The 12% scrap that is still there caused by the stepping mechanism of the rotating table (as we have not dealt with that part of the machine).