Our next much awaited Spotlight interview is with the first crowdCAD challenge winner Danny Tasmakis aka Danny Tas.
Danny took home the first prize of the Amarok triple clamp competition, not an easy task among the 150 high quality entries. He’s been an active community member, and was happy to answer our questions about his background and more. He will be one jury member of the newest Exo bike fender challenge as well, so if you are participating, you might want to take a note or two reading the interview.
GC: The first natural thing to ask is about the Amarok competition, of course. What made you participate in it and have you taken part in similar challenges before (if yes, which ones)?
Danny: I'm always up for a challenge and the Amarok competition seemed to be and was an interesting one, interesting for me anyway, it was a totally different project to what I'm used to from my everyday design job. It's funny though I'm not really into motorcycles, I like the look of them and I basically know the engineering behind them but I'm no Terry Stonehocker from GrabCad who most of you know is a motorcycle nut that does amazing work with motorcycles. I actually looked at the Triple Clamp as a construction part that has to withstand relatively high forces from multi directions.
I've entered in a hand full of other challenges and competitions in the past, mainly at Designboom, they're a website that cover design, architecture, art, photography and graphics, they have some amazing design competitions with thousands of people participating, when I have the time I’ll enter into one or two a year, not so much to win, but for the challenge and experience........winning would be a bonus though :)
GC: How much effort did you put in your winning model? How did you come up with the end result? And how much did you follow what the other fellow engineers were up to?
Danny: Well, at the beginning I have to admit I just jumped right into it without any plan, I designed and modelled the the first Triple Clamp on the fly in front of the computer. I was happy that I completed it and submitted the result with the little spare time I had at that moment in time.
In the next few days I kept an eye on the other entries and thought wow! these designs from the other guys are amazing, that's when something stirred inside me and thought I could do better than my first attempt, that's when I took one step back and started thinking about it. The two main thoughts that were running through my mind for the next couple of days? Light, strong and aesthetically pleasing....well maybe three thoughts.
Then it happened. Driving from work when suddenly the light bulb turned on above my head, don’t ask me why, I started to think about bridge design, long spans, minimal structure withstanding high loads, trusses, cables, arches then ribs. As soon as I got home I started to visualize and sketch my next Triple Clamp and I felt that a rib design with curvature would be the right combination for a strong light weight design, it didn't take long to model after that, most of the time was taken up by forethought and sketching.
GC: Any good advice for the next challenge participants?
Danny: Yes! Don't rush into it, take one step back and start thinking about it and visualize, once you've seen the design in your minds eye the rest will just flow.
GC: About your background - what have been the main influencers during your career? Any specific reason why you are mainly working on plastic products and injection moulds?
Danny: I haven’t any ‘people’ influencers as such, keeping up with technology, innovations, design websites such as Yanko design and Grabcad of course, are good influencers.....well I guess ‘people’ put out the designs at these sites so, yeah! Other designers are my influencers.
I’ve been in the plastics industry for a long time now, I was fortunate as an apprentice to be trained in most aspects of engineering at a large electrical manufacturing plant where we were trained in design and manufacturing of metal press tooling, plastic injection and compression tooling, jigs and fixtures, special purpose machinery, factory maintenance, R&D and the design aspects of all the associated parts using the aforementioned processes.
I took the plastics path immediately, I like the fact that you could mould plastic into any shape or size you like and every plastic part has it’s own little challenges in design and manufacturing, for me it’s fun. We can’t really get away from plastics, we (the world) are trying to find alternative solutions because of the environmental impact of plastic but I think it has to come down to education and recycling, plastic doesn't throw itself, people throw it.
GC: What have been the most challenging projects or products you've had a chance to work on? Any valuable lessons learned during the process?
Danny: Designing moulds for the automotive industry is getting more challenging, plastic parts are becoming more organic in design with all sorts of funky fastening systems involved that become very challenging in de-moulding, even with plastic engine parts being implemented more and more these days the exotic materials used to withstand heat and warping are also challenging in the moulding process.
I’ve also worked on some dental product designs that were quite challenging, there wasn’t one flat surface in those things, they were almost alien.
The biggest lesson I’ve learnt during my designing adventures is to keep your customers and design team in the loop in every aspect in the design and with every decision made during the project, no surprises.
Star Trek replicator technology coming to life soon?
GC: In your opinion, what could be the key trends that can change the engineering and design industry in the near future? E.g. small scale manufacturing that 3D printers enable? Revolution in CAD software industry? The lack of engineering graduates (until engineering becomes popular major again) causing replacing humans with even more technology?
Danny: mmm...good question. One word comes to mind, sustainability. Everything today, right now, is all about the planet we all live on, the environment, the impact our industries and way of life are having on this planet. Now we’re looking into alternative energy, we have wind turbines generating electricity,
I’m seeing more domestic solar panels on homes because of the advance of engineering and manufacturing techniques so your average Joe can afford a piece of the future, hybrid and electric cars and bikes are becoming more common, it took a while to come up with an alternative design to the internal combustion engine which is basically still the same design from what was used in the model T Ford to now the Bugatti Veyron.
This is the key trend, I believe, that is changing the engineering and design industry now and in the near future.
I also believe that in the future the moulding machine will no longer be required with the way 3D printers are advancing at such a rapid rate. I’d love to see a Replicator, like on Star Trek, this machine rearranges atoms and molecules to make anything you like, now that’ll be cool.
GC: Who are your role models in product engineering and design?
Danny: I don’t really have any role models as such, but I do admire some past people, for instance, Albert Einstein for his brilliance in physics, Leonardo da Vinci for his inventions and innovations that were way ahead of his time and Howard Hughes for his, just do it! attitude towards engineering.
GC: The best product ever engineered? Again, can be anything from a door bell to an Airbus plane seat...
Danny: The Wheel of course.
Transformer by Kir Ari
GC: If you could work on your dream engineering project, what would it be and who would be in your dream team?
Danny: I haven’t thought about a dream engineering project really, maybe because I’m satisfied where I am now, I did mention in one Grabcad post where we were talking about the movie Transformers and how cool it would be to design and model the characters of the Autobots and Decepticons.
GC: And last question about your working environment configuration: your favourite software and tools that you use in your everyday work?
Danny: The engineering office I work in is an open environment, I like it because of the ease of communication with fellow colleagues when working on projects together, instead of being in those closed up cubicles....does any engineering office still have those?
We use Siemens NX6 (Unigraphics) at the moment, we upgrade every two releases so as soon as NX8 is out, we’re onto it. NX is used exclusively from 2d conceptual design to 3d modelling to CNC Machine cutter path generation, and is the only 3d design package we have in the place, so it has to be my favourite, we also have Ansyis FEA, Autodesk Moldflow and Varicut simulation software, I mainly use Moldflow when needed.
Big thanks to Danny for the interview and as always, if you have any other questions for him, leave them in the comments.
