Industrial Design
The customer holds the patents for a unique restraining method for varying load sizes on plastic pallets. Skeg was commissioned to implement the technology and design a range of pallets that would eventually be injection moulded in various grades of plastic.
The challenge with plastic pallet design is the continuous quest to reduce weight, but maintain performance in strength. Added to this the fact that the retaining system cut through major load paths in the pallet, made this a very intense design.
Due to the high loading on the pallet a simple design approach of using generic material properties in the structural analysis was not an option. We needed to approximate actual plastic pallet material properties as close as possible.
This was achieved by modeling current plastic pallets in CAD, doing full FEM analysis and then modifying the results to match the deformations as measured on an actual loaded pallet. It was a classic benchmark exercise that gave us invaluable data to use in the FEM analysis of the new design.
Multiple iterations and versions were designed and analyzed to create a range of pallets for the customer.
Prototyping
Sections of the pallet were prototyped to test the ratcheting mechanism in full scale through 3D printing, silicone tooling and vacuum casting. A 1/2 scale prototype of one corner of the pallet was also made for marketing purposes using the same methods.
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