Illuminating Services

By Carl Smith

By migrating from 2D to 3D with the help of Avatech Solutions, Q-Lighting has been able to get to market more efficiently with products like its Bil-Lite.

Q–Lighting, based in Lexington, KY,  produces portable and wearable lights used by campers, boaters, mechanics, doctors, and anyone with the need to illuminate small items in poorly lit areas. Incorporated for more than 35 years, the company employs 40 people, most of whom work in the assembly plant where the lights are hand-built with specially manufactured parts from proprietary designs.

From 2D to 3D
Q–Lighting recently considered selling to Wal-Mart and Home Depot, but its managers quickly realized their capacity could not meet demand and they would become too dependent on single contracts. So management decided to work with smaller specialty distribution outlets like Ace Hardware and Eddie Bauer. To meet the needs of these niche channels, the company needed to improve design turnaround time to keep up with customization requests. The challenge was to shrink time-to-assembly and at the same time eliminate massive part modeling costs.

Most of the parts Q–Lighting uses are plastic and require molds for manufacturing. Q–Lighting found that the process of transforming a 2D drawing into a mold drained valuable resources.

Engineers generate 3D files for a new product and test it virtually in Autodesk Inventor.

The company looked to Avatech Solutions of Baltimore, MD, an engineering solutions consultancy, for answers. As senior application expert, I was to take Q-Lighting through the transition from Autodesk AutoCAD to Mechanical Desktop and then to Inventor to take advantage of the product’s new 3D capabilities. My experience as a mechanical engineer and an Autodesk Certified Instructor helped in the move.

Q-Lighting had hundreds of components already created in Mechanical Desktop and did not want to lose that work. Avatech ensured this by helping convert the geometry and providing customized title blocks and fonts using company standards. This turnkey solution enabled designers to concentrate on new work and innovation — not on details that were easily standardized. I then spent a week with Q-Lighting’s in-house design team helping them learn the new programs by working with them on their actual production drawings as assignments.

Avatech showed Q-Lighting how to use Inventor to produce assembly instructions — publishing the exploded views directly from parts information. Q-Lighting’s website also takes advantage of Inventor Studio drawings.

Faster Product Line Generation
“Using Autodesk Inventor, our new rapid prototyping machine, and Avatech’s expertise, we have literally reduced time-to-market for some products from two years to six months,” says Ira Cooper, owner and president of Q–Lighting. “The speed of the design-to-model process has improved significantly and the 3D visual representation has been fantastic, allowing us to reduce interferences and get a lot more done in a shorter period of time.”

Seeing Autodesk Inventor’s ability to reduce the cost of modeling, Cooper decided to complement it by acquiring an in-house rapid prototyping (RP) machine. Now, the engineering team generates 3D files for a new product and tests it virtually all in Autodesk Inventor. When the team is satisfied with the result, they send the Autodesk Inventor file to a Stratasys FDM 2000 RP machine, which generates a physical 3D model.

“Virtual testing and creating physical models allows us to easily see whether the assembly will work prior to creating new parts,” adds Cooper. “Now, instead of spending $30,000 for a fully built-out working 3D model, it costs us around $700 in materials, plus our time — and we control the process,” he adds.

Significant Rewards

• Virtual Testing: “Because we are one of the last family-owned businesses in this market, we need every possible advantage to maintain an edge on our competition,” says Cooper. “This new process with virtual testing capabilities in Autodesk Inventor, and the rapid prototype machine makes us an extremely efficient design organization, helping us to get our products on the shelf before our largest competitors.”

• Improving Part Fits: Many of the parts that Q–Lighting uses to house their electronics snap together. Different tolerances for the snap shafts and their corresponding holes are used for different purposes. With Autodesk Inventor, designers can be assured that if they change a shaft diameter, the hole will resize to accommodate the change. “This lets us quickly adapt an existing part for a new product, without having to do the math, because Autodesk Inventor does the work for us.”

• Decreasing Time, Increasing Precision: “Working in 2D is slow,” says David Russell, a design engineer at Q-Lighting. “It is a drafting process, not a design process. If you miss a detail on a design, or don’t remember to change a layer, you get problems. Autodesk Inventor does away with all that by automating updates. We are not a big company and don’t have a huge design department, so Autodesk Inventor makes us faster and more efficient.”

• Reusable Designs: From the design department’s work, Autodesk Inventor helps produce assembly instructions — publishing the exploded views directly from parts information. Similarly, the website, through which Q–Lighting sells products direct to consumers, also takes advantage of Autodesk Inventor studio drawings.

To meet the customization needs of niche channels, Q-Lighting improved design turnaround times and eliminated massive partmodeling costs.

Lighting Up the Future
The company is enjoying the benefits that Avatech has helped them achieve. “Q–Lighting has 16 new products in development and we know we can get them to market quicker than ever before,” says Russell. “We are working on a Bil-lite with clamps, a new kind of snake light, and a fresh line of music stand lights.” 

“We look forward to working with Avatech to produce innovative new designs that take advantage of design re-use and produce complete assemblies in far less time,” concludes Cooper.

More Information

Autodesk, Inc.
San Rafael, CA
autodesk.com

Avatech Solutions
Owings Mills,MD
avat.com

Q-Lighting
Lexington, KY
q-lighting.com

Carl Smith is the manufacturing professional services manager for Avatech Solutions. You can send an e-mail about this article to DE-Editorsmailto:[email protected].