The story....
Kinneir Dufort, www.kinneirdufort.com, is one of the world’s most experienced and versatile innovation and design consultancies. Their award winning teams work internationally with global corporations as well as small to medium enterprises and entrepreneurs.
They undertake innovation and design programmes in diverse categories including: healthcare, telecommunications, consumer goods, food and drink, home and personal care, and industrial products. Their approach is centred on an understanding of both the user-experience and the client’s business needs.
Within their headquarters lies an 11,000 ft2 (1000m2 ) innovation facility comprising of an integrated user research viewing lab, state of the art creative design studios and comprehensively equipped in-house prototyping workshops. It is the prototyping area that Freddy Products was asked to assist. The CNC machines they use produced large quantities of dust in cutting Polyurethane model board. This dust was finding its way from the machines onto the floor, and into the air which, of course Kinneir Dufort found unacceptable. Domestic vacuums were being used to try and stem the flow, but really were losing the battle. Space too was an issue, being placed as they are in the centre of town in a listed building.
Freddy had to find a way of extracting all dust and waste from the CNC’s, and piping it down to the basement of the building, ensuring a neat, sympathetic installation, and ensuring that noise didn’t affect the workforce. We opted to install a Hascon Pulsatron PC04EX in the small compressor room they had in the basement. It was a snug fit, but it went in. Ducting was then installed into the workshops, out through the window, and down to the basement. Two silencers were also installed to insurer that the workforce could not detect the machine working, and more importantly the residents in the surrounding area. Kinneir Dufort now has a model studio with massively improved dust management; dust from the CNC machines is now pulled down to the waste bin under the Hascon unit for easy disposal.
