The existing steel tooling for the SCIFIT console housings was reaching the end of it’s life, resulting in cosmetic defects and reject parts. Recognizing the need for new tooling to sustain production, the team at Life Fitness seized the opportunity to re-imagine the console and they trusted DiMonte Group with the redesign effort. We brainstormed opportunities, sketched updated concepts, and 3D modeled production ready geometry, culminating in an end product that improves upon the legacy console, reduces part cost, and adds new user-centric features.
Objectives:
- Identify opportunities for improvement. By understanding the needs of modern and future users, we incorporated new features for improved user experience and convenience.
- Enhance ergonomics by slimming down the console to provide more hand clearance.
- Breathe new life into the console’s styling, aligning it with the SCIFIT design language.
- Simplify manufacturing by avoiding expensive and unreliable side-actions in the injection mold tooling and designing with manufacturing in mind.
Industrial Design:
We started by creating ‘post-it note sketches’ to rapidly capture and sort our initial ideas and concepts. Using Solidworks we mapped out the handlebar positions for the seven different machines this console would be attached to. This gave us an in-depth understanding of where the console footprint could grow or shrink. Using the Solidworks data as an underlay we sketched multiple styling concepts, thoughtfully integrating our favorite ideas from the post-it note phase. After several client feedback sessions, we had a final concept that fulfilled Life Fitness’s functional and aesthetic objectives.
3D Modeling:
The legacy design utilized a massive and complicated side action to create the cupholder area. Our updated design separated the cupholder out into a 3rd part thereby simplifying the design, reducing tooling costs and prolonging the life of the new tooling. Our improvements also included changes to interior mounting brackets for ease of assembly and manufacturing. We delivered a production ready CAD package that Life Fitness seamlessly implemented into production.
