Carmo × Navigraff: a development partnership

My name is Frederik Jakobsen. I am COO at Navigraff. Navigraff is a company, based in Aalborg. We have several different companies under the Navigraff brand. Navigraff. One of them is our stretch sensor used to measure navicular drop. also known as foot drop. My name is Tobias. I am a Development Engineer here at Carmo. Carmo is a company, primarily working with injection molding. But in addition to that, we also have a 3D printing department. That's where I work. We reached out to Carmo because they already supply components to the medical industry. Because they already supply components to the medical industry, they already work with medically approved components. I is important to us because our product needs CE marking and MDA approval. That's why it's important to us not only that we can get the product, but also the documentation required for regulatory approval. The advantage of 3D printing compared to using injection moulds is a twenty percent cost saving. The benefit for us has been that we can get a component quickly and at a competitive cost, rather than paying twenty times more for injection moulds for a product that may still require modifications. This is where 3D printing has really, made a significant difference for us, so that we can see exactly what we're working with, and make changes quickly and get a new version produced. In this case, it's not certain that we would have taken on the project. We have quite strict product requirements when it comes to conventional injection moulding. Getting started with steel moulds is both expensive and resource-intensive. Thanks to our 3D printing capabilities, we were able to help a customer like Navigraff get their production up and running much more easily. We needed a locking mechanism to hold the stretch sensor in place. I had a meeting with Carmo During that meeting which took less than half an hour, we sketched out the concept on a piece of paper. Three weeks later, I had a finished produkt inklusiv dokumentation. So going from idea to implementation in just three weeks was really impressive. Navigraff is a classic example of a customer that comes to us with a challenge. It may be that they need help with product design. And that's where we can help define what a component should look like, so that it can be manufactured later on. We can also help identify the right materials from the start. From my perspective, it has been a great experience. We have had a good and open dialogue right from the start. The journey from concept to finished product is very short. You get to speak with the right people when you come here. And it doesn't matter what level of the organisation you speak to. Everyone understands the task at hand. And if you're not quite sure what to do, you simply ask for help. It's been a great collaboration, and I can highly recommend them to others.