Mass production

Anyone know the best way to mass produce boat mouldings 2.5m x 1.7m?

I am working on an updated version of my earlier design www.ezyboat.com (formerly ClamBoat)

It does not have an integral trailer but does fold in half.

Thanks

David

 

I'm not an expert on moulding technology but I know some questions an expert would probably ask:

What volume per year are you anticipating?
How important is low investment to you?
What are you quality requirements
What appearance is needed for the reverse side of the mouldings?

 

What volume per year are you anticipating?
1000

How important is low investment to you?
Lower the better but not critical given long term nature of the investment

What are you quality requirements
Lightest weight grp

What appearance is needed for the reverse side of the mouldings?
Underside unimportant.

 

I am bit puzzled by your request,

" mass produce boat mouldings " means you want to build lots of moulds - not lots of boats.

What are you going to do with 1000 moulds a year ?

If you mean mass produce boats - what do you need to know ?

You build a mould, put glass and fibre into it, and pull the hulls out !

What is the bit that has you wondering ?

 

Usage I've seen: mouldings/moldings are made in a mould/mold.

Boats may be assembled from mouldings.

 

Ok, that makes sense - especially when a hull is at least two 'mouldings'

So all that remains is what the request for help is aimed at.

I suppose the problem could be all or any one of :

Material specs and sourcing
Staff training
Safety Manuals and Legislative requirements
Mould Supporting Structures
Production Environment and layout
Mould surface preparation
Waxing materials and methods
Layup methods
Quality Control
Extraction techniques
Module assembly

Any other areas anyone ?

 

Interesting beast, I'll bet the original did a lot of trailer wheel bearings! and don't worry it would have been almost as bad if only used in fresh water!.
It would work quite well if it had integrated 'trolley' wheels NOT trailer wheels. A lot of RIB and Dory trailers require new bearings every year or two even if they are greased. I am rather too familiar with those taper needle arrangements and may end up redesigning the hubs so they work properly for regreasing. They are a very poor design.

Most of the points for manufacture are covered above, but key are the material specs and moulding type. Moulding 50 is not the same as 1000 necessarily.

You have your contact e-mail turned off, I would appreciate it if you could PM me, might be able to help you a bit on this one.

 

Interestingly, the sealed wheel bearings have not been a problem. That may be because when in the water they are raised above the water level so do not get any wetter than regular trailer wheels. It may be that the seals are as good as the manufacturer said they were. Anyway, my personal boat has been in and out of salt and fresh water for over ten years and they work fine. It was a problem for the some existing boater owners though because they would not believe it was possible.

Our main customers were folks new to boating and saw its versatility, ease of use, towing and storage as the last barrier they needed to overcome before taking the plunge.

The problem, first time round with the boat, was simply not being able to make them fast enough to meet the initial demand.

I know that car manufacturers are using more and more grp and they must have developed faster production methods and lighter products. Are these techniques yet being applied in boatbuilding. If so, where?

 

While 1000 units a year is a good rate for a boatbuilder, it is very, very low production by automotive industry standards, and that rate would probably use the same technologies as volume boatbuilders. Higher volume production rates in automotive would generally use metal tooling.

In the US there is a consortium of three companies which go by the name "Closed Mold Alliance" and who actively promote three different closed mold technologies. They have a website with descriptions of the technologies and information about which to use. http://closedmoldalliance.com/ Another website is http://www.compositesworld.com/knowledgecenter/closed-molding I don't know how interested they would be in a UK based customer but they may have distributors or affiliates in the UK.

 

Anyone in the boatbuilding business should probably have a subscription to Professional BoatBuilder. It's free to those in the industry. http://www.proboat.com/subscribe/subscribe-to-mag.html

 

Thanks for the contribution David. The cross over area is more in automotive truck cabs and the like. Also there are quite a few 'custom' features for various models (car, truck, pickup etc) which are significantly lower than the main production build. Still high volume compared to most boat production though.

For example I was involved in the custom Pickup rear protective floor and side moulding for a Nissan vehicle a few years back. This was a monster vacuum forming. The needs of truck cabs and other parts are more precise and therefore tooling, modes and materials are different.

It could be that trailer does not run the standard type of bearing arrangement that makes it last. I would expect to strip it every 3 months if used in the sea for example even if greased every trip. An good example (not too untypical) would be 8 month old trailer for a RIB of 4.5 meters with 40HP had the wheel fall off completely when being launched at Rutland Water.....
IMHO the seals (on the conventional type) do not seal and of course if the bearings are hot after trailing and you immerse them water rushes in, oops!

 

Thanks to all. David

 

Just for your info, the http://www.ezyboat.com/index.php/gallery of your site wont open properly for me in Firefox or Chrome. It might be worth checking

After the excellent advice previously given prior to this post, may I just add that there is seldom ONE solution to efficient (financially and materially) production.

Its often a 'design circle' of gradual improvement, and often the solutions are peculiar to a product.

The only real 'short cut' that works that I have observed, is to hire an experienced person to head the operation.

 

Try this link for Firefox,

http://www.ezyboat.com/the-ezyboat/gallery

I got it to work, but in an ancient version of Firefox V 12.0 on a W2k box!. Your link above also gave me a strange rendition of the HTML -

 

I have an Ezyboat - great little boat for my needs. However, I need to replace the tyres (and the wheel hub) - rust etc.. but I am having difficulty in removing the tyre. Is there a trick to removing it? Additionally, are there any maintenance manuals or spare parts documents available? The retractable wheel mechanism needs some TLC, and potentially replacing. Any hints would be welcomed.