Bucher Municipal – V Series Sweepers – HMI – Industrial Design
Bucher Municipal is a leading manufacturer of compact and truck mounted road sweepers. Form Foundry has been an Industrial Design consultant to Bucher (formerly Johnston Sweepers) for over 20 years. We have worked on exterior vehicle styling, complete cab interiors and specific control instrumentation. We were also involved in the previous iteration of the HMI panel and door controller for the previous line of truck mounted sweepers.
For this project, we were tasked with redesigning the door controller as above as well as the HMI display below. The door controller houses the main sweeper controls and is usually mounted on the cab door or ‘A’ pillar. The new door controller needed to be more compact that it’s predecessor as well as housing additional function buttons. We utilised injection moulding for the main, two-part, bespoke housing and worked with a UK based moulder for production. Our 3D CAD data was used to create both prototype parts and the production tooling.
The new HMI Display panel above is based around an existing display unit manufactured by the Bucher subsidiary, Jetter. This panel system allows for modular extensibility. We created new, custom moulded add-ons to house the lower and side mounted control buttons. The appearance of the panel, modular add-ons and door controller are closely tied together. Using elastomeric keypads on all the elements further enhances the common look and feel.
By using the correct materials and production methods an automotive level of fit and finish can be achieved even when production volumes are low. We often provide our customers with a cost comparison of different processes based over a number of years of production. This clearly shows how tooling and piece part cost can be affected by the different production methods thus helping the client to choose the best route forward.
For this project we were involved from the initial concept sketches through to prototype and production documentation. We created detailed 3D CAD to develop the design for production and to create photorealistic visuals or client approval and internal marketing.
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