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07/12/2009
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Mark Sanders, principal product design and engineering consultancy MAS Design and winner of Design Engineer of the Year at this year's British Engineering Excellence Awards
 What is the design process you go through when faced with a new project?
I designed an automatic jar opener for a company I had just designed a can opener for. The brief was an affordable automatic device aimed at senior people but could have wider appeal. Firstly, I got hold of all the existing products and sat down with a group of potential users and got them to try them all out and comment. The next stage is sketching. I had to work out mechanisms that recreate what you do when you open a jar. But actually that is quite difficult. You basically grip the top and the bottom of the jar and then twist in opposite directions. But if either of those grips slips you automatically tighten your own grip to cope with this. Thinking up a mechanism to do this was the hardest and most creative part of the project.
What is the process of creative engineering?
It is certainly something you can learn as part of the design process. As well as trying to come up with ideas myself, doing brain storming with colleagues can be really helpful to maximise the number of ideas and concepts. After all, engineering is about being creative and finding clever solutions; people tend to forget that.
Do you tend to sketch out designs first and then move on to CAD software?
I do CAD from the start as well. Often I do a combination of CAD and sketches. I get all the basics in to CAD so I have all the sizes and volumes worked out. I then sketch mechanisms on to a CAD layout which is much faster and as soon as I get that crystallised I put it in to CAD.
How do prototypes feature in the product design process?
They are a big part of it. I firstly build some quite crude hand prototypes which are more like sketch models. Some of them don't even work but they are good for mapping and getting the sizes right, so I can see if a certain gearbox or motor will fit inside. Others are just mechanical versions just to test that a mechanism or concept will work. There tends to be lots of simple crude prototypes, but then only one or two working prototypes that are fully motorised with all the switch gear.
How do you go from concept/prototype to productionise a product?
It is then a case of really refining the design; getting the parts count right down and trying to take cost out of the product. Also making sure the strength and durability in the product is right.
Plastic is a good material to work with as you can integrate parts and functions in to a single piece. You can have bearing mountings, switch mountings, the battery holder, the bearing guides; it does loads of stuff. This makes parts cheap to make. The tooling is expensive, but it is building in four or five components and functions and so it is giving the product a lot of functionality at very little cost which is the name of the game. It can be easier to make two parts to do the function and screw them together than make one clever part that is difficult to injection mould. But I have always had the philosophy that if you can minimise the part count – it is best for everybody to do so.
Advice to readers for there designs?
Styling and engineering need to be integrated right from the start. You have got to balance optimising the mechanisms with keeping a good shape and making the product look good. The appearance of products is so critical to making them desirable and it is often what sets products apart – not technology or functionality. You have got to get the balance between good design and practical engineering that fulfil all the technical requirements right.
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Author
Justin Cunningham
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