A Minnesota-based manufacturer of high-quality ATV, snowmobile, and motorcycle parts and accessories had a design and development problem with a snow blade that created a lot of time-consuming rework. Thanks to 3-D scanning from GKS Global Services, the problem was recently solved. 

The challenge

The Minnesota company serves both original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and the aftermarket offering everything from product development and design engineering to complete steel fabrication, including stamping, tube bending, robotic welding, and assembly. The company designed and manufactured a prototype snow blade for the Yamaha Grizzly ATV. Previously, to mount it, assembly techs had measured the mounting locations by hand. However, they oftentimes found that the mounting holes on the blade interfered with the free-form plastic grille that enclosed the front of the ATV. In fact, interference when mounting items to the vehicle led to a lot of design rework on many of the accessories and aftermarket parts the company manufactured. The company needed a faster and more accurate way to capture the ATV’s geometry for their part design and development process.

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