Youmans Capsule - Taking your creativity to the world

The Youmans Capsule offers creative professionals and executives - architects, designers, artists, photographers, developers, engineers and planners - A new way to present their work.

By adding custom foam inserts to the inside you can further extend the usage and customisation to what you need.

The outside of the aluminium shells can be individualized by engraving a logo or flatbed printing an image or logo.

Based on a rolled and folded Aluminium shell, encased and protected by moulded plastic components such as the hinge which also gives the capsule a unique look.

The essential design integrity of the Youmans capsule is carried through to its materials, manufacture and packaging.

For more information on this product, visit www.youmanscapsule.com

Tooling - Design, Construction and Manufacture Sophistication

The tooling for A2 and A3 was already well underway elsewhere and at that time Axiam was yet to get involved however as a result of offering assistance to the toolmaker, we found ourselves in the middle of what was going to be a whole lot of very complex issues with no easy solution.

After some discussions with the client and getting a real understanding of his needs, we came to the conclusion that the tool design and material selection already underway was not going to come close to meeting the needs or standards of this product. A serious issue when tooling is over 50% complete.

Axiam assisted in completion of the A2 and A3 tools where needed, and also got on with design and tooling manufacture for all of the A4 plastic moulding tools in house.

Then the fun started with A2 and A3 tools, designed in such a way that was far from ideal and shrinkages etc set for materials that were not suitable for the end product.

Production Materials and Process Sophistication

Key elements for this product are cosmetic finish, functionality and strength as well as extremely high dimensional tolerance. No easy feat with parts as long as 600mm plus in some cases and tooling made for the wrong material.

After several months of trial and error and tweaks to tool runner and gate design as well as considerable changes to water cooling channels to give us better process control on the A2 and A3 tools, we had come up with a new set of material selection’s for all the parts that we believed would meet the needs of the product.

Hinges for all 3 capsules was changed to 15% GF PA6, getting the parts to the correct size while ensuring thick sections posed no visible sinks. Gating was also changed as the unusual shape created some issues with non-uniform shrinkage which in this application causes major issues.

Primary challenge was the Inner parts that needed to match the Aluminium shells such as the A4 Inner frame as well as all the long internal A2 and A3 parts. These were changed to GF PBT so we didn’t have to deal with much dimensional change post process. (GFPA for example, post mould would change size enough to throw parts way out of tolerance so this was eliminated.)

Tool trials were conducted over and over to establish process capability on these parts that ensured tolerances could be held to acceptable levels. (The aluminium parts were being made to tolerance of +/- 0.2mm. so if the plastics were not held to a similar tolerance even on parts over 600mm long, the potential issues with the assemblies are very obvious)

Once process capability was established and we knew we could hold tolerance and maintain a minimal standard deviation over a production run, we knew we were on the right track. It’s one thing to have process stability but we still needed to make the parts the correct length as the tools were not made for this material. Next step was to trial different glass content percentages on all of the parts.

A lengthy and costly process however as long as the process was stable we could adjust the length of the parts to what was needed by adjusting the glass content.

The Glass ratio differs for each different component to achieve this.

Commercial Performance

While the capsule is only new to the world market, testimonials are proving that it is giving companies the edge with  presentations and a very professional polished image.

Capsules are already as far afield as Europe, South Africa and Asia as well as Australia and NZ. With  great potential in many other markets.

New Zealand Content

All tooling, manufacture and hand craft assembly of the Capsules are done here in New Zealand where “Fogi” Directors have found the ideal partners to bring this product together. Such as “Stainless Design”, “Finex” and “Axiam”, With Design partnership with Adam Laws Ltd. Aus.

Environmental Achievement

Aside from all metal and plastic components being recyclable, The shell is made from recycled aluminium produced with clean hydro energy from Manapouri power station.

Fogi has come up with an innovative environmental solution for protection and packaging the capsules so that they can be couriered all around the world.

First there is the Black protective glove which provides protection and also can be used to clean the capsule. The gloves are 95% Bamboo and 5% spandex.

The A2 and A3 outer packaging is made from Bamboo pulp and the A4 packaging is made from Sugarcane.

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2012 Biannual Plastics NZ design awards