CASE 03 · PART ANALYSIS · OPTIMIZATION
Before any metal was cut, the design went through FEA — stress hotspots reinforced, excess material removed. Production ran on a verified drawing, not a guess. First articles passed without a single revision loop.
The problem: a design that had never been stress-checked
The part looked reasonable and had been quoted by several shops. But none of them had asked what it was loaded to. Production was about to run on geometry that had never been structurally verified — which is how a part ends up failing at first articles, or worse, in the field.
What I did
- Modeled the actual load case. Applied forces, constraints and boundary conditions were set from how the part is really used, not from a generic assumption.
- Ran FEA and read the results as a manufacturing decision. Stress concentrations were reinforced; material that carried no load was removed. The output was a better part, not just a prettier stress plot.
- Reconciled analysis with process. A shape that analyzes well but cannot be cast, machined or formed is useless. Process constraints were applied after the optimization, following the same order described in the DFM checklist.
- Released a verified drawing. Production ran against geometry that had been checked, so the shop was building a known-good design.
The result
First articles passed without a single revision loop — no tooling change, no re-quote, no schedule slip. The cost of the analysis was a rounding error next to what a revision would have cost. The same logic underpins every part I run through the four capability domains.
Where I fit in
I run the analysis that stops a revision loop before it starts — stress, deflection and manufacturability checked on the model, then released as a drawing the shop can build. Send the part and how it's loaded.
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