fastening & assembly solutions and technology - Approved Business

Bespoke hinge
becomes the standard
ABritish manufacturer of bespoke
vehicles wanted to develop a concealed
door hinge for a new vehicle,
which will be used for mobile food sales
and is being designed for a major High
street supermarket retailer.
The vehicle is being designed with
two side doors for easy access. The specification
for the vehicle called for the
hinges to be concealed and to open curve
shaped doors. The major difficulty was in
opening a rounded door when it requires
moving it away from the frame first.
Therefore special attention had to be
given to the cinematics of the hinge. In
addition to this the door weighed 25 kg
and needed to be hinged vertically. It
would clearly be difficult to hold this
weight in a vertical position with a concealed
hinge, so a robust design was an
absolute necessity.
The additional feature was to open the
door more than 90° because drawers containing
food and beverages required to be
fully opened.
Pinet’s first idea was to propose an
existing hinge from the catalogue, but to
modify it to a greater size to secure the
door weight. One issue with this solution
was the existing concealed hinge only
opened to 90° not the 110° required.
Therefore the shape of the hinge had to
be modified to reach opening angle. After
a number of design meetings Pinet finally
proposed a multi-link hinge which
fully met the requirements of the customer.
The bespoke heavy duty hinge had the
specific cinematics to open curved doors
and was sufficiently compact with
enough torsional stiffness to meet the
specification. The hinge, which opens to
110°, exhibits high fatigue resistance and
had been tested to 10,000 cycles using
two hinges on a door with a total weight
of 25 kg
Prototypes
Pinet has the capacity to produce prototypes
in plastic with a fast 3D printing
machine. The design team gets quick
access to the parts and a faster evaluation
of the cinematics. This has proved important
when motion issues have to be considered
and allows design amendments to
be made in just a few hours.
The new product proved so interesting
that Pinet decided to include its next catalogue
as a standard part and now offers
it to other customers with similar needs.
The applications found so far include:
hatches on rail and road vehicles for catenary
maintenance, using basket cranes,
covers for off-road vehicles and heavy
FAST OCTOBER 2011
A special hinge designed with the latest computer techniques has proved so popular that it has been
included in a standard parts catalogue
The concealed
hinge opens
curve shaped
doors
PRODUCT REVIEW: HINGES
wall panels for washroom re-fits.
Some time later, the company received
a bespoke hinge request for a BBQ project.
The customer was looking for a concealed
hinge with same features – a concealed
hinge for curved heavy doors with
110° opening.
The BBQ design had an unusual shape
but it was necessary to open hatches to
put a gas bottle inside. Pinet’s design
engineers worked on another version of
the concealed hinge in order to fit inside
the BBQ and the result was the same type
of hinge which is now used in various
applications.
PINET INDUSTRIE
07967 478 917
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