Product Development

What design support can Carville provide for product development?

Carville have a successful track record supporting many clients with their new product development from early concept stages through to series production. In the early concept phase, Carville can review your sketches and give guidance on general manufacturing feasibility. If required, we can create component and assembly drawings for client sign-off to meet your specifications. Throughout the product development process, we can guide you on achievable tolerances, positions, finishes, fabrication and assembly options.
Some projects require experimental development work and new or altered manufacturing processes at Carville, so we manage and conduct this work with our dedicated new product R&D team. Example projects include new materials, encapsulation designs, complex fabrications, novel bonding methods, complex assemblies and new processes. These usually result in supplying a number of prototypes to the client for testing before any additional iterations and then series production.

Do Carville make Prototype precision machined plastic parts and manifolds?

Carville often make low numbers of prototypes prior to series production or for special, low volume applications. We often provide quotes and parts for volumes from 1-offs to 10s and 50s for first prototypes to help clients decide on the best commercial route.

Can Carville design a fluidic manifold for us?

Many clients do not have the resources or experience to design fluidic manifolds (liquid, gas or combined) for diffusion bonding, so Carville are here to help. This can range from reviewing client’s designs and CAD models, through to complete designs from scratch. These projects generally fall in to one of three categories:

Category 1: Client designed bonded manifold

The client has a clear idea of their specification and a reasonably good idea of how to design a bonded fluidic manifold. The client provides a dimensioned drawing and CAD file of the part or assembly, Carville review this for manufacturing feasibility and provide feedback on recommended changes to optimise the manifold manufacture, reliability and to reduce overall cost. The client then updates the design and Carville produce the parts.

Category 2: Existing non-bonded manifold design

The client has created a manifold design based on traditional techniques such as cross-drilling and O-ring/Gasket sealing, or has a current prototype or production part made this way and wants to explore a bonded fluidic manifold option. The client provides the existing design and CAD as well as a flow schematic and system specification (e.g.: fluids, pressures, temperatures, functions and valves). Carville, working with our development partners, will then create a concept bonded fluidic manifold design in CAD, recommend components and valves, and send this for client review. After review and iterations, either Carville or the client can produce the final CAD and dimensioned drawing to facilitate manufacture.

Category 3: New design from scratch

The client wishes to create a design for a bonded fluidic manifold but does not have the resources or experience to create this. Carville, using our development partner, will work closely with the client to define the specification of the fluid path requirements and generate a fluid schematic. We will then work with you to select the appropriate components and create a concept manifold design for review and approval. We will then go through the design iterations, including identifying critical to function areas and produce early prototypes for testing. We will then support you through to series production.

Development and CAD tools

Carville use the Autodesk suite including Inventor CAD/CAM. This includes the AnyCAD data system to allow us to import original CAD from many different software systems including Solidworks, Pro-E/Creo, Alias, CATIA, DWG, PTC Wildfire, NX, STEP, Solid Edge and Fusion 360. For initial design reviews, we recommend you send files to Carville in STEP format.

What volumes can Carville support for series production

Carville supply production quantities ranging from small batches through to daily volumes of 100s or even 1000s depending on the products and demand.

Project Management

We work closely with our client’s project management teams and assign an account manager to new product developments to be the key point of client contact and manage the project internally.