IM Co. Ltd. used 3D printing for fast functional testing to solve the insurmountable problem of drying your pet after a much needed bath.
Furry and cuddly, pets are now integral members
of many families. Yet, giving pets baths and drying
them afterwards have always been a headache for
pet owners.
Founded in 2011, IM Co. Ltd. (IM) has broken new
ground and developed a multi-purpose, hands-free
dryer to solve this problem. The first- and second-generation DUZ dryers were released in 2016 and
2017, and the company is poised to launch the
third-generation.
3D printing helped us reduce the iteration process from three months to less than one. For IM, the F120 is a loyal and reliable employee that keeps creating value.
Sung Yeol-gyu, CEO of IM Co., Ltd
IM Co., Ltd designs multi-purpose, hands-free dryers to make giving pets baths easier.
Speed is top priority.
Because the company is competing in a new
and expanding market, the speed of product
development is a top priority. How fast IM can test
the prototypes decides how it can better serve the
customers and maintain its market leadership.
In order to accelerate the development process,
IM resorted to 3D printing, which promised to
transform ideas into reality in no time. However, the
low-priced printer that it first purchased fell short of
expectations because of the small output. When its
print bed bent, IM replaced it with a larger printer.
However, its part quality was so inconsistent that
IM had to outsource the prototyping to Jeonbuk
Technopark, a government-funded organization.
In order to get high-quality parts, IM had to go
through a series of complicated administrative
procedures and pay considerable fees.
Eventually, Sung Yeol-gyu, CEO of IM, decided to
purchase a professional 3D printer and bring the
prototyping process back in-house.
Professional means reliable.
At the recommendation of a researcher at Jeonbuk
Technopark, IM considered the Stratasys F120™,
the latest addition to its award-winning F123™
Series. A plug-and-play printer, the F120 not
only provides industrial quality (with a deviation
smaller than 0.2 mm), but also prints two to
three times faster than IM’s previous printers. The
accompanying GrabCAD Print™ software simplifies
the entire 3D printing process with an intuitive
CAD-like application, and features like detailed
reporting and remote monitoring allow the team to
manage the print jobs from outside the office.
Sung Yeol-gyu sent the prototype files to
Stratasys’ Korean office to check the quality of the
benchmarks. To his delight, the benchmarks were
consistently accurate in three rounds. “We made
the decision in a flash,” said Sung Yeol-gyu.
3D printed prototype for an IM Co., Ltd multi-purpose, hands-free dryer.
Amazing results.
The F120 has played an essential role in the
development of the third-generation DUZ dryer.
Iteration has always been a challenging task. The
complex structure of the dryer means that the
product must be modified multiple times before
release, and the whole process could cause
serious delays, which translates into heavy costs.
The product team now uses the F120 to print the
dryer’s fan blade, a core component, for form and
functional testing.
“With the F120, we can now assemble parts right
after the printing and if there were any problems,
we can find out and make corrections on the spot,”
said Sung. As the prototypes can be used for
functional tests, the IM team no longer needed to
do the lengthy flow simulations and can check the
air volume and noise level within 12 hours. Before
acquiring the F120, IM needed to spend 15 days
to modify a mold by way of test injection, which
itself took one week. As a result, any changes in
the mold meant a delay of 1-1.5 months.
Prototype parts made with the Stratasys F120 for the IM Co., Ltd dryer.
With the F120 running quietly in the office, IM
shortened its entire prototype development cycle
by over 67%: from three months to less than one.
At the same time, the company also witnessed
considerable cost savings. A test injection cost
at least 1 million KRW (around $815 USD), and
a mold modification cost at least 500,000 KRW
(around $470 USD). These numbers would add
up, and in-house 3D printing is much more cost-effective. “For IM, the F120 is a loyal and reliable
employee that keeps creating value,” commented
Sung.
Furthermore, the earlier 3D printers that IM used
would need laborious post-processing. In contrast,
the support material that the F120 uses is soluble;
the entire process takes just two steps: dropping
the parts into the tank and removing them when
the support material is dissolved. This leads to
significant savings in time and labor.
Embracing 3D printing..
At this moment, the F120 has become an
indispensable part of IM’s product development
cycle, and the prototypes it prints out help the
engineering team perform functional tests with
speed and efficiency. But IM is about to take
another step to fully enjoy the benefits that 3D
printing brings. Sung is thinking about introducing
a Stratasys PolyJet™ 3D printer, which is known
for its full-color capability and hyper-realistic parts,
perfect for design verification.