Professional Experience
Hedge Trimmer
A highlight of my professional experience as a Design Engineer at Gtech was designing a lightweight hedge trimmer, battery and charger range of products. This project involved designing a compact and lightweight hedge trimmer that aligned with the companies existing garden tool range of products.
The Project
The existing hedge trimmer was heavy and the style no longer matched the companies design and branding guidelines. The new trimmer design needed to be lighter and more compact; Visually the new trimmer needed to look fast and sporty.
Light Hedge Trimmer
The new design had to match the companies existing brand guidelines whilst trying to create something that looked compact, streamlined and sporty. Several concepts and forms were explored in the inital stages of the project. The chosen design was approved for further development using CAD and prototyping methods. The design is now in mass manufacture and is being used by people all across the UK.
Battery Attachment
A new 18v battery and battery fitment attachment were also designed for use alongside the new lightweight hedge trimmer. Extensive 3D modelling and surfacing was required to seamlessly blend the battery into the handle section of the trimmer. Optimising the design internals for injection moulding also proved challenging . Splitting the attachment section into a white top and black bottom section solved many of the undercut and tooling direction issues. This also meant that the black and white colour way was consistent across the trimmer
Fast Charger
Designing the fast charger was very much constrained by the size and shape of the standard charging electronics housed within the case. Therefore the main purpose of this project was styling to create a charger which met the brand guidelines and style of the company. A split colour way and simplistic form were the only visual constraints. Initial inspiration images were found to create a basis for ideas when sketching. Several versions of the charger were sketched before the preferred design was chosen by senior management.
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George Owen Design
George.owen5@hotmail.co.uk.
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