Beyond hydraulics

Written by Stephen Holmes

Published Thu 6 Aug 2009

When Mike Turner, was asked to look at emerging technologies in the world of big wheel loaders, focusing on the possible benefits of removing hydraulics and replacing them with alternative methods of actuating dig mechanisms and propulsion systems, he was quick to act.

The director of industrial design company, Mike Turner Design Ltd, has always had a real affinity for this kind of product and relished the challenge, although this would be reliant on transforming his ideas into reality.

Brave New World of EAPs

Mike Turner Design decided to focus on an approach based around the use of Electro Active Polymers (EAPs), that is currently being worked on by NASA teams in Pasadena, California. Effectively this relies on plastic muscles that lengthen, bend or contract as a response to small amounts of electricity by lengthening, bending or contracting.

“Such solutions might seem off the wall or avant garde now but might conceivably be up and running within the next ten to fifteen years,” says Turner. “I didn’t think it would be a massive leap of logic to assume that if the technology keeps moving forward that within this kind of timeframe, EAP arrays could be used to power digging machines rather than hydraulics.

“The basic configuration, the linkages and the way it would perform needed to be along the lines of a typical current machine. However, there would, of course, be no need for hydraulic rams, all the technology would need to be embedded into the dig arms themselves.”

Mike began to transform his ideas into 3D models using Autodesk Alias Design, to manage the 3D surface data, and Autodesk Showcase, to communicate form and to present multiple design variations.

“Rather than making it look like an animated creation from the latest blockbuster science fiction film, I wanted to keep the look of the machine believable and realistic – rooted in the realities of existing machine design,” says Turner.

The transformation

“I am traditional in my approach,” reveals Turner, “so this project started like most of my industrial design projects - with pen and biro sketches. I then scanned the pictures in and started to modify and adjust them within Alias Design, particularly to ‘work up’ the colour,” continues Turner. “Once happy with the sketches, I used Alias Design to develop a preliminary computer aided industrial design model that both defined the design and packaged the principal elements.”

“Alias gives you more direct control over the surface you are working on when you are NURBS modelling than any other engineering design software that I have worked with,” opines Turner. “You can play with the model and adjust it until it matches the precise way you want it to look.

The designer adds that the other key benefit is that you can import image planes and work directly over the top of them. “It is easy to retain the character of your original sketch and build on this as required.

“It feels a logical extension of physical model-making and follows exactly the same techniques and conventions. As a design tool, it understands what designers do and how they work. As a modelling package for industrial design work, I don’t think there is anything to touch it.”

Visualisation and rendering with Showcase and Maya

Showcase was used for the later stages of livery development work and the final stages of looking at different variants of the design to tweak and refine it.

Turner was left impressed by the power of the tool. “The quality of presentation material you can generate and the way you can go into the system and change colours and swap liveries live quickly and easily or set up animations, turntables and fly-bys is excellent,” he says. “It helps to give you confidence in the look of the final design.

“Rather than just focusing on a static image, you can go in and explore details, pan-around geometries and answer pretty much any questions that the client has got,” Turner adds. “It is invaluable for putting digital data in a context that non CAD-based people can easily digest.”

The monetary benefit of such technology is also a welcome to the Derby-based designer. “The cost of producing a large-scale mock-up for design sign-off can be prohibitively expensive. Using Showcase allows you to do more with less and helps reduce the money you spend on prototyping.”

He explains that because this was not a live project and there was consequently no intention to take it into live commercial production, it is difficult to put a precise figure against the time and cost savings achieved.

“However, on similar projects I have carried out in the past, I have always found the costs of producing full size computer numeric control (CNC) styling sign-off models for machines of this scale to be prohibitively expensive,” he adds. “It can cost upwards of £60,000 for the numerous CNC machined parts required to build a full sized, fully detailed exterior mock-up alone.

“If it was a live job, there would also be a large time penalty incurred when producing a physical mock-up,” he continues. “From the point at which surfaces are considered to be finalised and suitable for review, there is typically a two to three week turnaround time, at least, to get all the prototype components tooled, moulded, prepped, painted and delivered onsite.

Realistically, you can expect to add a further week to get everything accurately assembled and fine-tuned prior to review. As such, time-wise the project typically has to wait a month from data release through to review date; which is down-time as far as ‘productionising’ the design is concerned.”

For these reasons Turner is a strong advocate for using Showcase in styling reviews. “The obvious time-savings associated with being able to obtain instantaneous feedback from this kind of design are desirable for any project team, as it allows them to maintain their momentum on the job. While Showcase doesn’t negate the need for fully representative pre-production prototypes downstream, it can make a significant difference to the upstream costs and time investment traditionally associated with obtaining styling approval.”

Maya was used for the final renderings, with the key benefit being the transferal of data files from Showcase. Turner explains that there was no need for any costly or time-consuming re-modelling and that the final images were faithful to the original data. This was key to the design process that had a time-scale of only one week.

ANTARES comes of age

The resulting digger design is the first in a series of similar projects under the brand name ANTARES (named after a red supergiant star in the Milky Way galaxy) that Turner is planning over the coming months.

“ANTARES is a kind of catch-all term which covers all of the developments on which I am currently focusing,” says Turner. “There is a kind of continuity, so other projects that I carry out in the future around this basic concept will also be branded ANTARES and will have a similar kind of corporate identity, signature and form language.

How ANTARES ultimately develops is still reliant on the future development of EAP technology, although Mike Turner will continue to envision the future of heavy machinary through Alias and Showcase.