Product Development
Donaldson Filtration as an affiliated company of parent company Donaldson is located in the USA. Donaldson Filtration PLC in Haan, Germany develops and non-specifically produces high-power industry dehydrators in various versions and cascading. The design of the Ultrapac 2000, its great functioning and the corresponding service have made Donaldson Filtration market leader in their respective field.
In cooperation with Squareone a new generation has been developed. Especially the design and the new, very powerful silencer are very promising. In this case, Squareone have been responsible for innovation, research, analysis and product design as well as moderation. During a product development period of 18 months, we additionally took over consultatory functions and developed an interface with corresponding controls apps of the new dehydrator generation together with the Donaldson team. This technology retains Donaldson’s position as the first player in the market.
During the design development, two major challenges occurred: cascading that is dependent on the numbers of cartouches on the one hand and the modularity of the product itself in all three space axes on the other. In this case the product modularity is a great advantage for the user because it’s possible to choose between up to six footprint combinations – depending on the individual available space. It was therefore desired that the design ensured free combination possibilities of both cartouche and silencer.
The product was launched at the Hannovermesse 2017.
Due to the pressure ratio inside the dehydrator we had to use an aluminum extruded profile. This showed construction-conditioned restrictions that have partly been compensated by the design but also by respectively high component intelligence of the bordering plastic components.
For this Squareone designed numerous extrusion profiles that have been adjusted and designed suitable for production for the respective design variations. Groove depth and width were not only based on the design but most importantly on the standardised groove geometry of the major profile system providers. As an example we can mention Item, who made it possible to keep using attachments for the dehydrator in the future.
Using a milled and printed prototype, we met up with the team to check function, design and proportion, and then refined the product.
