Harboro Engineering in Excellence

• Introduction
• Complete Service
• Innovative Approach
• Manufacturing
• Packaging & Delivery
• Quality
• 6 Reasons to Talk

Part design

We seek to ensure that your design is maximised to provide the best, most reliable function at minimum cost. This involves a number of factors.

• We need to understand your application and how the part is expected to function. We check that the design will achieve this and make any suggestions that will improve its performance or increase its reliability.
• We look at any opportunities to add additional function e.g. making it easier to assemble or removing the need for tight tolerances on other components.
• We also look at ways of simplifying the design, increasing reliability or reducing potential costs (both of the part and of the tooling).
• We look at any features that could create quality or manufacturing issues and seek to mitigate any potential problems to ensure reliable production of parts

Material selection

We look carefully at material options. We check the environments that the part will perform in to ensure that the material is ideally suited and not more expensive than required.

• We check temperature requirements (both high and low) to be encountered in normal use and in extreme conditions and combine this with expected lifetime. We consider the consequence and modes of failure and any appropriate mitigation required.
• We check what fluids, gases or weathering the part will be exposed to, for how long and at what temperatures. We look at potential contaminants and how they might affect the rubber.

From this information we select the rubber type to be used and look at the specific characteristics required.

• We consider any mating materials involved and the affect of the rubber on them e.g. contact with ABS requires the use on non-leaching plasticisers in the rubber.
• We look at physical properties required e.g. for flexing, sealing, pressure, vibration and abrasion factors.
• We look at electrical properties and other characteristics that may be required
  From these and other factors we ensure a suitable grade is selected
• We then ensure a suitable material specification is agreed.

Material development is sometimes required since not all factors can be known or predicted. In this case we supply suitable samples of material that can be tested in the application or in a simulated environment to ensure suitability or to develop/modify the compound further until it is suitable.

Trialling

It is common to develop and fully test the design through prototyping. We can produce inexpensive prototype tools from which a range of suitable materials can be moulded for testing. This allows us to vary factors such as hardness for trialling in the application. Prototyping allows full product testing. Up to 100 samples a day can be moulded from a prototype tooling if pre-production parts are required.

Manufacturing for quality & cost

During the design and development phase we make careful study of any manufacturing issues and provide advice and design input to save costs and increase reliability in the final product. This includes:

• Process design
• Tooling design
• Quality design and risk analysis
• Quality plans and monitoring

Cost of manufacture and alternatives

• At all stages we provide full costing to ensure you are able to take costs or savings into account in any changes arising from the design development.
• Normally costs are based on our own manufacturing facility in the UK.
• We also provide alternative quotes for manufacture outside the UK where it would be cost effective to use one of our reliable low cost partners. We handle all the procurement, stocking and quality control requirements leaving you with a simple cost effective option.

We have extensive in-house resources including rubber chemists, rubber engineers and a fully equipped laboratory. We are able to develop materials to meet particular requirements and specifications. We can help develop the function of part through sampling, testing and prototyping.

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