The customer gave a simple prompt - “We need to bead blast the end of tubes and leave a sharp edge.”

From that prompt, we were able to create a concept to provide to the customer proposing a design to load tubes outside the bead blast cabinet and start the process to have a custom fixture automatically insert the tube into the bead blast cabinet via stepper motors with adjustable sensors to set the length.

The design phase of this project included several challenges:

1. Several different ideas for masking the tube and creating a sharp transition from bead blast to stainless steel tubing were either inefficient or not robust.

2. Bead blasting is messy and moving parts quickly bind and wear in those environments. All components of the machine were designed to last in these harsh conditions.

Once the design was complete and manufactured, final testing required iteration of the design to adjust the length of the tubes. DesignedIndustry persisted on this project and ultimately created a successful design that ran millions of cycles with limited maintenance.