Background

Agami Systems came to Speck Design for the complete redesign of an original chassis.  The original unit was overheating, unstable when installing racks, and expensive to manufacture, which resulted in significant product returns.  With the primary goal of enhancing the user experience, Speck Design worked in close partnership with Agami to redesign the chassis, taking the process from conceptualization through to manufacturing.

Challenge

Based on our expertise and long history of working with clients such as Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks, Speck Design tackled the issues of overheating, weight, look and feel, manufacturing cost, and product line expansion.  Agami not only sought to fix the original chassis, but also wanted to add two more products to the product family.  Speck Design also analyzed thermal performance and airflow in greater depth.  Another major amendment was product assembly, because the existing product needed to be disassembled and reassembled before shipment, resulting in an expensive design that was prone to damage, and had an overall poor user experience.

Solution

The Speck Design team analyzed and implemented solutions by creating a 3-D CAD database for each member of the future chassis family: the 2U, 4U, and 5U chassis.  The process included the creation of 40 prototypes and 25 bezels, as well as 25 prototype battery modules.  Through thorough research and execution, Speck Design created production-ready drawings to present to Agami.   In order to ensure that the manufactured parts would be satisfactory for the end-user, the Speck Design team reviewed several vendors in China.

Results

Speck Design significantly reduced the cost of production of the hard drive carriers by 75% and decreased the number of its parts by more than 50% from 24 to 10 pieces.  Speck Design also helped improve airflow to the chassis by 50%, preventing overheating.  These improvements helped eliminate failures in the field.

The final design was cable-less, using dozens of board-to-board interconnects.  Additional improvements included removable top covers, an LCD user interface, mold-insert logos (allowing for ease of changing logos), removable bezels, and a combo ejector and carry handle.  In addition, Speck Design produced an analysis that allowed for the use of thinner sheet metal resulting in a 30% weight reduction.  We also helped create rack mounts that eliminated the need for tools during installation and removal, so that the drives could now be installed and removed smoothly.  

PROJECT INFO

• Client:

  Agami

• Project:

  Nexgen 2U, 4U, and 5U Chassis

• Industry:

  Networking