Inspiration - Custom Cycles
Bicycles are something most of us can relate to, and many of us have experienced the process of buying one. One thing probably stands out - it needs to be comfortable. Choosing the right size frame is therefore an important starting point, and one which is not as easy as it sounds.
There is a whole industry around measuring riders to determine what size frame will suit them, and if you are an elite athlete you can have a custom frame designed and built just for you.
But what if everyone could have a frame tailored to them?
CAPTURE
Whatever the custom product is, a key ingredient is the external input which makes it 'custom'.
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Capturing inputs such as measurement data and incorporating them into the customisation of a product is very application-specific, but at APWORKS you can be assured that we have the skills and tools to make your custom product a success, whatever the challenge.
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In the custom cycles example, instead of expecting customers to measure themselves, we made it much easier by using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enable us to extract the key data we needed from a video uploaded by the customer.
This reduced the skill needed by the customer, and the hassle, and hence increased the engagament rate.
CONFIGURE
Developing robust configurable products is not as easy as it sounds. While parametric CAD enables you to parameterise your models, it doesn't guarrantee that they will be stable throughout the design envelope.
But the CAD design is the easy part.
The real differentiator within Genome is our ability to automate the process between CAD configuration and data for manufacturing, including any analysis which is required to validate that the unique configuration is both manufacturable, and fit for use.
Depending on the requirements of the application we can integrate CAE tools such as Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) into the workflow.
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Last but not least, we automate the generation of the data needed for manufacturing, which eliminates yet another manual bottleneck.
MANUFACTURE
Thanks to the flexibility of Additive Manufacturing (AM), it is one of our core capabilities for producing customisable products, but it is not the only one.
In most cases we combine AM with subtractive processes such as machining, as well as surface treatments to reach the final product. The particular constraints of all of the manufacturing process chain need to be taken into account when defining the customisable product.
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In the case of the custom bicycle frame, we also use carbon fibre tubes which are designed as a stock part which can be custom trimmed, but which benefits from economy of scale by only needing a single set of moulds. Most of the adjustment is in the lugs which are produced by AM, thereby not requiring any special tooling.
DELIVER
Our goal is to deliver hardware. We don't believe that it is enough to simply offer a software tool, as that is only the tip of the iceberg.
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Our goal is to help our customers to differentiate in their own market, where they understand their customer and their customer values their brand.
We offer an end-to-end technology solution which enables our customers to develop and sell their own customisable products. We act as an invisible enabler, taking responsibility all the way from the customer request through to hardware delivery, whether to your own assembly facility or direct to your customer.
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We focus on what we do best - helping our customers to access better performing products, tailored to their needs, faster.