Industry:
Major Recreational Vehicle OEM
Application:
Design of a flexible heater for handles of recreational vehicle
Opportunity:
Prospective customer came to FCT with an initial design that they had worked on for over 9 months that had to do with a heater assembly to be used on handles of a recreational vehicle to keep hands warm during colder weather. Their desire was to have a flexible heated handwarmer that could operate at 3 different settings, dependent upon how warm the user would like given the temperature.
The initial design by the prospects engineering team led to a flexible heater with components that would attach to a PCB that had additional components all aimed at managing the device. In total the customer had over 30 components identified with some being expensive components that included long lead times. Upon FCT’s initial review, we knew we could simplify the design to where we could eliminate most of the components while offering the same or similar performance.
Solution:
FCT design engineering team developed a solution that provided 3 differing heater zones that could be controlled by a single switch, allowing for the same 3 settings of warm (1 zone engaged), warmer (2 Zones engaged), and warmest (all 3 zones engaged), while getting rid of most of the components that had been identified based upon the initial design.
Result:
FCT developed a far more simplistic design that would offer the same performance while also providing added reliability over the life of the product. Further, FCT was able to pull out most of the components offering substantial overall savings (an approximate 40% decrease in overall costs) and further offered a product solution that would not be held up by long lead time components; providing the end customer with a huge win related to this design!
