Aplicación del Aplicación del design-for-assembly design-for-assembly en el en el  desarrollo de un nuevo chasis para armarios desarrollo de un nuevo chasis para armarios  de distribución eléctrica

Authors

Introduction

The technique related to the elaboration of electrical cabinets provides, in most cases, solutions

that imply a high heterogeneity of pieces, high costs, complexity and excessive time of

assembly. Moreover, it does not allow to exchange pieces between the cabinets of different

manufacturers, which generates individualized and not reusable structures. In particular, the

structures responsible for supporting the electrical devices and wiring, collectively known as the

chassis of the electrical cabinet, is a paradigmatic example of this problem for its high impact

on the time and cost of assembling a standard electrical cabinet.

Materials and Methods

In order to reduce this problem, we have used the Design-for-Assembly (DFA) method to

evaluate existing designs and create a new chassis from the point of view of the assembly

stage.

DFA method considers aspects of the fi nal assembled process in early stages of the conceptual

design, providing an effective methodology for the achievement of new designs, more robust,

simple and objectively reliable.

Results

A new chassis were designed according to the guidelines of the DFA method, after being

identifi ed the problems and evaluated a representative sample of the different existing chassis.

It has been reduced the number of parts and increased their versatility and ease of assembly.

Conclusions

Finally, we have obtained a new chassis which improves the results of the prior DFA evaluation

and reduces the time and cost of manufacture. In addition, DFA method has been proved as an

effective guide in the conception and implementation of new designs.