With many years’ experience in the production of customised mechanical components, the engineers at Hampshire company Blue Diamond have identified the propensity of customers to spend thousands of pounds, unnecessarily, on the manufacture of handed products i.e. right and left hand versions of the same part.
Careful consideration of the ‘design for manufacture’ aspects of these products provides the opportunity to reduce cost dramatically – customers should not be obliged to order equal quantities of left hand and right hand products when they are not needed, just because it’s not economical to set-up for smaller productions runs.
It may be possible for parts to be machined in such a way that left hand and right hand features are only added at the end of the manufacturing process, allowing higher numbers of the base part, containing common features, to be produced more economically.
Blue Diamond endeavours to re-engineer handed parts in such a way that left hand and right hand attributes are assigned at the end of the manufacturing process – for example, the handed sub-components can be slotted into, screwed into or welded to the main assembly.
The streamlining of handed parts has become something of a speciality for Blue Diamond who examine all applications to see if by adapting, or adding mating components, parts can be rotated or adjusted to fit in such a way that the need for handed components is completed eliminated.