Talk:Ceiling-mounted bicycle lift
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* Nice FMEA table – a lot of detail, but it’s not clear to us what you concluded. Our biggest concern is anything that might cause the bicycle to fall on someone – particularly a child. We have been involved in lawsuits before, and it’s important to us to make our product as safe as possible. How likely is it that our customers might install the lift improperly? You identified oxidation of fasteners that could cause bike to fall - this is a big concern – is this something we can avoid? I see you have latch failure as the top issue – this is big for us, and changing the manual will be good, but the product will often be used by people who did not buy the product or read the manual – we are looking to make the design intuitive and foolproof. How can we do this? | * Nice FMEA table – a lot of detail, but it’s not clear to us what you concluded. Our biggest concern is anything that might cause the bicycle to fall on someone – particularly a child. We have been involved in lawsuits before, and it’s important to us to make our product as safe as possible. How likely is it that our customers might install the lift improperly? You identified oxidation of fasteners that could cause bike to fall - this is a big concern – is this something we can avoid? I see you have latch failure as the top issue – this is big for us, and changing the manual will be good, but the product will often be used by people who did not buy the product or read the manual – we are looking to make the design intuitive and foolproof. How can we do this? | ||
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| + | ===Additional Comments=== | ||
| + | It might be useful to know what mechanical advantage the pulleys provide, in order to determine what force the user needs to exert. Additionally, it might be nice if the preface to the Parts list on the front page said a bit more about the contents of the list, and some generalized information about the parts. | ||
Revision as of 02:51, 14 February 2007
We received your report on the bicycle lift and were impressed with your work. Your analysis of the product is thorough, although in some places it would have helped to more clearly outline your conclusions and recommendations. Overall, your analysis seems to suggest that the product is pretty good as is. We were hoping that you would find more opportunities for improvement, but we will look forward to seeing your ideas in the next report. Detailed comments follow:
- You stated that the most critical failure modes are caused by misuse and offer that “The best ways to reduce these risks are to emphasize proper use of the product and maintenance and tightening of fasteners in the user manual.” We are happy to hear your suggestions for redesign of our manual, but we don’t think this will be sufficient – in our experience, users don’t follow such directions, particularly for properly maintaining the product, no matter what we do, and we need to aim for an intuitive and foolproof design.
- Your description of customer needs and pictures of the steps using the product are interesting (although I’m not sure why the person in the pictures appears to be making faces). Did you learn anything from studying these steps? A few questions that came to my mind are: What angle is needed with the rope to set the locking mechanism? Is it easy to pull the rope sufficiently to the side for locking even if the bike is mounted in a high location? Where do users typically install these? In your test studies with non-mechanically inclined users, was it easy for the users to figure out how to use the product without being instructed? Are there any opportunities here?
- The locking mechanism pictures are helpful, but a free body diagram and force analysis would help us a lot: I can’t tell from the pictures how it actually works. You noted in the FMEA that it is a major focus of attention for failure. Is it sized properly? What can we do to improve?
- Nice BOM with pictures and CAD models. How will the CAD models be helpful?
- We appreciate your thoughts on DFMA. You haven’t offered any suggestions for improvement - is your conclusion that we’ve already done everything we can? For your DFE you suggested use of recycled materials – do you think this is something we should look into?
- Nice FMEA table – a lot of detail, but it’s not clear to us what you concluded. Our biggest concern is anything that might cause the bicycle to fall on someone – particularly a child. We have been involved in lawsuits before, and it’s important to us to make our product as safe as possible. How likely is it that our customers might install the lift improperly? You identified oxidation of fasteners that could cause bike to fall - this is a big concern – is this something we can avoid? I see you have latch failure as the top issue – this is big for us, and changing the manual will be good, but the product will often be used by people who did not buy the product or read the manual – we are looking to make the design intuitive and foolproof. How can we do this?
Additional Comments
It might be useful to know what mechanical advantage the pulleys provide, in order to determine what force the user needs to exert. Additionally, it might be nice if the preface to the Parts list on the front page said a bit more about the contents of the list, and some generalized information about the parts.
