Case study
You can hardly see it and it can withstand as much as 50 kg of load – a story of the PRO half-round foot in the ladder
What is the phenomenon of the PRO half-round foot?
The semi-circular feet installed on the ladder make the step can withstand up to 150 kilograms of load! We have specially selected the material we use to manufacture the PRO feet. It ensures that the semi-circular feet have passed all the tests of the complete ladder – anti-slip and load resistance. Consequently, our customer received a professional TÜV certificate, which testifies to the compliance of the ladder's construction with the European standard EN 131. The warranty on the ladder based on the PRO half-round feet lasts up to 5 years!
2019
When did this start, and what has been the significance for Ranplast?
We began producing plastic components for ladders in 2019. That meant an expansion of the scope of operations for our team. We became component suppliers to various manufacturers of construction tools and accessories.
What challenges have we faced?
Our product attracted the attention of a sizeable company involved in ladder manufacture. They had a problem with the use of an older generation injection mould, which resulted in poor-quality feet. We discussed this with the company's representative and undertook to join forces in making, producing and delivering modern semi-circular ladder feet to the production line together with our client. Our main task was to refine the design in practice.
What have we done?
Our company carries out projects in what we call the IDPP model -- 'From idea to design' This means that we focus on these four elements of the product development process:
- Idea
- Design
- Prototype
- Product
In practice, it looked as follows:
We started by fine-tuning the ladder foot models we received from our customer.
We refined our customer's design with a new shape, which enabled us to streamline the ladder production line - it involved changing the form of assembly from manual to working with a state-of-the-art automatic machine to assemble the ladder feet onto the aluminium ladders. The customer's requirements were straightforward: the shape had to be perfectly matched to the ladders they were producing. Achieving this requires, above all, the ability to repeat perfectly the same dimensions and weight of the feet. In the development department, we created as many as 5 such models using CAD construction software.
We prototyped each of the five models using our 3D printers. We then spent a considerable amount of time testing and correcting the semi-circular ladder feet. Until finally one of the designs turned out to be perfect.
We proceeded to the last and most important activity - we created four multi-cavity injection moulds. After receiving trial batch approval from the customer, we started serial production and delivery to the assembly line at the ladder factory.
