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Bell & Howell Company used rapid prototyping to customize scanner-system components and win a multi-million-dollar contract – the largest worldwide imaging installation by any supplier. It credits a Stratasys FDM® (fused deposition modeling) rapid prototyping system as the tool that allowed it to meet the customer’s specifications. To win the contract, Bell & Howell would have to design new scanner components, install working prototype parts, and quickly refine them to meet the customer’s stringent specification milestones.

Often remembered for its movie- and still-camera products made from the early 1900s through the 1970s, Bell & Howell has evolved to a company that offers various automation technologies. Like the original company, most of Bell & Howell’s efforts are focused on quality optics-based products. The company makes equipment such as high-end production scanners, high-speed mail-handling systems, sorting and inserting equipment, and electronic mail and messaging systems. The scanner division, based in Lincolnwood, Ill., builds leading-edge high-speed scanners that can quickly transform reams of paper documents into electronic files.

Precision Mechanics

When you think of scanners, don’t think of the $99 unit you might use to upload photo images at home. Bell & Howell’s top-of-the-line scanner, the Copiscan® 8000 Plus series, lists at up to $39,000. Here’s why:

For starters, it can zip through a stack of paper at 125 pages per minute, capturing data on both front and back, for a total of 250 images per minute. That’s about 4.2 images per second. More impressively, this scanner can reach top speed while handling paper thicknesses ranging from heavy card stock to delicate rice paper – mixed together. That’s precision!

Competing for a Large Order

Bell & Howell was one of a limited number of manufacturers invited by an existing customer to compete for a large order of 1,000 scanners. The customer is a Fortune 50 company that delivers overnight mail worldwide. On a busy day, the delivery service handles up to onequarter million packages, so it requires scanners that can swiftly process a large volume of paperwork.

No company offered a scanner capable of meeting the customer’s new specifications, so a few manufacturers were invited to compete for the sale by designing a scanner that could meet these specifications. To compete for the order, Bell & Howell would have to redesign its original Copiscan® 8000 model scanner. The new design would have to increase the throughput while decreasing the potential for stoppage.

Coinciding with the effort to win the order was a shift in design philosophy at Bell & Howell. The shift had begun when the director of mechanical engineering brought in outside expertise to help the engineers improve their designs by anticipating future manufacturing costs. “Once the design is frozen, the manufacturing costs are fairly fixed,” says electro-mechanical technician Michael Jones. “Any changes you make in assembly technique or construction material won’t affect manufacturing costs much, so it’s important to design with this in mind.” An important part of the new design philosophy is to find ways to reduce the number of components in a product.

Functional Prototype Assemblies

In the process of customizing the scanner, Bell & Howell made numerous changes to components and sent them to the customer for trial. “The part of the scanner we were working on was the document-feeder assembly,” says director of mechanical engineering Mike Scheller. The feeder separates the individual papers and draws them through the scanner. “On average, we sent the customer about one feeder assembly per week. They would install the parts and give us feedback so we could refine the design.”

“The feeder has elastomer rollers that had to rotate, move up and down, and move sideways,” says Scheller. “The paper handling is affected by how the rollers are held, geared, and driven. We had four different ideas on how we might accomplish that. We were able to prototype them on the FDM system and do some brief initial tests and send the parts to the customer.”

“You can have a 3D drawing with components that show movement, and it may look like it’s functioning correctly,” says Jones. “But when you build the solid model you see what you’re missing. Only then can you see if a part feature is too thin or too thick or not functioning like it’s supposed to.”

“There were numerous times when we thought the design would work, so we built a prototype, installed it in the scanner, and we immediately caught a problem. For the skimmer section of the feeder, we made a part and installed it, only to find its latch was striking the frame. We rebuilt it and curved the latch down to fix the problem. If that had been an actual pilot mold part, the tooling would have cost us significant money, and the part would have been useless.”

Working closely with the customer, Bell & Howell spent roughly five months customizing the scanner’s mechanical function before it won the contract. This customized, higher-performance version was named the Copiscan® 8000 Plus. It’s document-feeder is more efficient, increasing the unit’s capacity while reducing potential for stoppage.

Refinement Cuts Feeder Part-count by 50 Percent

As part of Bell & Howell’s ongoing refinement of the scanner, it redesigned the skimmer, a part of the feeder assembly. The new design reduced the part count from 26 to 13 components – a 50 percent reduction. And no screws were needed in the new assembly, because snap fasteners were designed to eliminate them.

Scheller says that prior to purchasing the FDM system the company’s design cycle was typically 18 months for a new product. “On average, we’ve brought that down to about 9 months: one-half the time it used to take. Much of that improvement is due to the FDM machine. With it, components fit together better; we have a better idea of the aesthetics; and we have much better design reviews than in the past.”

Using FDM rapid prototyping has also helped reduce tooling rework and its associated costs at the scanner division. “When we review the design with the molders, they see exactly what the part will look like,” Scheller says. “I’m much more confident that when we go to tooling, the part will work and look like it’s supposed to. In the past, we spent a lot of money on tooling work that had to be redone.”

FDM System Credited as Tool Responsible for Contract

Having the FDM system in-house was instrumental in winning the large contract, according to Scheller. “To win the order, we had to meet the customer’s milestones, and we had to get useable prototypes out quickly,” he says. “If we didn’t have the FDM system, we would have had to use outside model shops, which would have increased the time and cost as well as jeopardized the effort. The FDM system is largely responsible for us winning this multi-million-dollar sale.”

“No matter how well you plan your computer model, you can never catch everything,” Jones says. “But with a solid model from the FDM machine you can be sure. That’s why it has been so important to us. We compare it to the replicator on Star Trek. We can have an idea, and within hours we can have a functional prototype to install in our scanner. Bell & Howell uses the Stratasys FDM 2000 model rapid prototyping system and says it has performed exceptionally well. It is often used to run overnight and on weekends and doesn’t require an operator. “We have had minimal downtime with it, and its benefits are enormous, so we hope to get a second FDM machine – the one with the largest build envelope – the FDM Maxum.™”

Rapid Manufacturing Scanner Components with FDM

Like a number of progressive companies, Bell & Howell has made steps into the area of rapid manufacturing parts using the FDM system. Engineers found that the quality of the component called the flag hold-down built on the FDM system was better than needed to perform its job, so they decided to manufacture them in bulk on the FDM system rather than order them from a molding company.

On average, Bell & Howell produces 160 flag hold-downs each month, and in total, it has made close to a few thousand units. They are manufactured in batches of 50 on the FDM system and installed directly in the end product.

“It’s advantageous to have the capability [to rapid manufacture parts],” says electromechanical technician Michael Jones. “If a supply company failed to deliver a plastic part for some reason, we could prevent a production stoppage by building the parts on the FDM machine. Another advantage is if we planned to change a component design after a relatively short time, it might be more cost effective to build our own parts rather than pay a molding company for tooling and production.”