Engineering Process

From The Desk Of Bernhard Leitner, CEO

As the CEO of Leitner designs I tend to wear a lot of hats. Literally because I am bald and do my best to hide it and figuratively as that’s what being a small business owner is all about.

Out of all my hats the “product design” one is my favorite. It’s what I based Leitner designs on when it was founded in 2007.

So where do the concepts come from and how do we turn that into a finished sellable product? If this is something that interests, you keep reading.

The best feeling you can have all day is when you’re looking at a problem and suddenly come to the realization you have solved it. It's before real work begins and you have not had time to realize the work you just made for yourself. 

Concept

In a world of computers and AI, I still prefer the pen and paper method early in the design. A few sketches here and there with some basic dimensions lets you know if this idea is going to make it to the next phase and lets you think over all the features it should have. 

Laser Scanning

Many of our products require that they fit a vehicle’s body. In this situation when we cannot get the factory cad data, we rely on our Laser scanner. It’s an impressive piece of equipment that fits in your hand yet lets you get sub 1mm accuracy over the entire vehicle’s body in a matter of minutes! Back in the day we used to make cardboard templates and measure them to get the dimensions we needed. This could take days. Technology helps us speed up time to market by cutting down on revisions. 

CAD

Computer Aided Design. This is where you get to see the concept come alive. Every detail is painstakingly modeled in our Cad program of choice, Solidworks. It’s a great program and one I have been using since 1998. 

3D Printer Samples

All of our designs are first 3D printed on one of our 3D printers. This allows for a fit check in a matter of hours not days or weeks. We own an especially large 3d printer with a build plate size of 72” X 24” X 24” So we can print even the largest parts for our roof rack and bed rack before we invest in any tooling. Most rack companies use off the shelf extrusion and simple laser cut parts but at Leitner designs we hard tool all our designs in casting, forgings, stampings and custom extrusions so before this investment is made every 3D printed part is installed on the vehicle to ensure a perfect fit and finish.

Pre-Productrion Prototypes

Detailed cad drawings are sent to our vendors in both 2D and 3D, giving them all the info they need to produce a part. 

Testing

Pre productions parts are quality controlled to ensure they are to dimensional specifications. These parts are assembled onto one of our test vehicles and put on our high speed desert test loop. The test loop runs from Barstow, California all the way to Laughlin, Nevada, covering 258 miles. A lot of trails are also used in the California 300 offroad race. Completion time for the loop needs to be under 8 hours. This test is performed 4 times for a total of 1000 offroad miles before a new product is certified for sale.As you can see a new product takes quite some time to engineer, prototype, test and produce. On second hand my favorite hat is product tester!