We had a hole in the pool deck that was a safety issue. So, let’s look at the various steps I followed in our product development process: Knowing that I could have this part printed in plastic here at PADT, I decided to go through the product development process as listed above. For us here at PADT, though, it has been a significant component of our business since the company’s founding in 1994. As I’m sure you are aware, 3D printing has been portrayed all over the media in the last couple of years. Unable to find a suitable lid for purchase, I decided to pursue a 3D printed solution here at PADT. Fortunately it wasn’t any worse than that. In fact, our 4 year old niece managed drop a foot into the hole and ended up with a scrape. The hole without a lid is a safety concern. All the available lids were too big and would not work in covering this hole.
However, after visiting several supply stores as well as scouring the internet, we could not find a replacement 5.5 in. You would think it would be simple to find a replacement, especially in metro Phoenix where pool supply stores are abundant. Figure 1 shows the work in progress, when the original lid was still in place.Īfter the cleanup was done, that lid was nowhere to be found. This hole was for something like a basketball hoop that could be dropped into this trumpet shaped hole. The problem at hand was the contractors accidently lost a plastic lid that covered a 5.5 in.
We recently had our back yard pool deck resurfaced. We’ll look at a simple example, knowing that the same tools can help with much more complex problems.
So, when we can share, it’s a good opportunity to show what our tools can do, as well as how we can utilize these tools to help our customers with the steps listed above. Most of the time, we can’t share the work we do publicly, for obvious reasons involving customer confidentiality. We do this very often at PADT, helping a wide variety of customers develop products to meet needs in the marketplace. There are other steps that could be added such as optimization and field verification, but in simple terms those steps outline the product development process. One of the great things about working at a company like PADT is that we have the ability to solve problems from start to finish.
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