Ford Automotive Alternators

Automotive alternators are rather interesting pieces of engineering; the technology has been around for a long time now but car manufacturers are always looking for lighter, more efficient, and smaller packaging; forcing the suppliers to always find new ways to improve their products.

I was in charge of helping with the manufacturing part of the design

The task was:

• Implement the customer’s specific fixation and packaging requirements to the standard elements

• Create custom plastic caps

• Test and validate manufacturing requirements

Unique solution:

One of the scope of this project was to add a smooth surface for an automated roller to apply a label on.

Which became a problem as the water draining holes would become obstructed by that feature.

However, thanks to smart redesigning and thorough verification, the solution was there and working.

Using FEA to validate the cap stiffness against the pressing roller action

Volvo XC90 LED Headlight

In 2015 Volvo aimed to release their first LED headlight, a major breakthrough in their product line.

Valeo was chosen as a supplier and I took part in the manufactring design.

The task was:

• Implement the optical and styling surfaces onto the manufacturing part

• Ensure that the design matches all of the many requirements

• Validate assembly and functionality in prototype

Unique solution:

It can be difficult to grasp the amount of requirements that modern automotive headlights have to follow until one gets confronted to it.

On top of the general product constraints such as process; manufacturing, assembly, styling and such, this major feature part are also required to conform to the following:

-Optical: The beam is very directional and the focusing has to be very precise.
-Vibration: For this reason, the whole part must remain stiff regardless of the moving parts
-Sunburn: The Polycarbonate lens can, under certain sun exposure burn the internals. Such occurrence has to be checked and avoided
-Safety: For being in the frontal position, it’s often subject to pedestrian impact requirements
-Heat Management: LED and controller will heat up when on and can lose performance if that heat is not managed properly

All of these points were validated thanks to the tight collaboration with the specialized services in house, leaving me with a very tight room to work with, but eventually just enough to make it work.

Epicyclic Valve Rectifier

This project was a part of my product design study assignment and was completed for Eagle France, now EKK, on their truck AC valve product.

The issue concerned an abnormal defect rate on the rectifying process. The valves were plastic injected then rectified by hand, with an operator manually loading the parts onto a plate and sanding it on a sheet of sandpaper.

The defect rate was over 20% and something needed to be done about that.

The task was:

• Create a more repeatable, semi-automated solution

• Reproduce the manual sanding motion

• Keep at least the same cycle time and capacity

Unique solution:

After extensive product analysis and research we chose to go for an epicyclic carrier, offering the most regular sanding action, guaranteeing the best results.

2 support plates drilled with holes to hold the valves radially would then be pressured against the sanding surface with spring loaded pressure plates. The spring load was calculated to reproduce the manual pressure.

The gearing ratio was also calculated based on the manual action, from the individual valve translation speed to the electric motor, passing by the main and planetary axles rotational speed.

On the manufacturing side, the gears, nuts and bearings were chosen from standard catalogs.