Multiline Braille e-reader from prototype build to finished product
Anne Pritchard • July 7, 2020
New Product Development from prototype build to finished product
New Product Development can be time consuming but also very rewarding!
Over the next few months, we will share the journey we have been on with a few customers to illustrate how we can assist from early design concepts, rapid prototyping, design for manufacture and assembly, supply chain optimisation, product standardisation, design approval processes, build & test.
Client no.1: Manufacturer of multi-line Braille e-readers
Product information:
Canute 360 is the world’s first affordable, multi-line refreshable Braille. It has nine lines not one, 360 cells not 40, and costs $7 per cell not $70.
With the Canute 360’s nine lines music notation, literature, tables, spreadsheets, charts, mathematical formulae and spacial diagrams are vastly more useful and pleasurable for the Braille reader.
Background: 2 years of product development leading to full production run
Our Mission: Support our client during the NPI process and deliver a successful product.
Given our expertise in PCB assembly, the first stage of the build was relatively straight forward.
The mechanical assembly was labour-intensive as it consisted in building rod lifts in the first instance.
Our production line was adjusted to maximise the output from cell to line production.
The final mechanical assembly consisting in integrating the PCB and rod lifts into the outer enclosure, which was followed by an intensive test procedure.
Customer feedback:
Canute has been a labour of love for everyone involved, taking many years to come to fruition.
Philtronics have been our manufacturing partner for a couple of years now and have helped shepherd it from prototype to a successful product.
Everyone we speak to assumes we get Canute made off-shore. No-one expects that something this affordable, complex, for blind people, is manufactured in the UK. But it was critical for us that it be made here.
The savings supposedly made by going off-shore are insignificant when set against the huge cost savings of being able to visit the Philtronics plant, make on-the-fly adjustments and work alongside the assembly team in person, month after month. It has proven essential for Canute's success.
Canute 360 has a totally original actuation method, all-custom designed hardware, including thousands of moving parts, and very tight per machine costs that makes batch manufacture a unique challenge.
Building such a complex machine has required a great deal of patience, experimentation and flexibility. Components, quality control and build processes have required constant adjustments, often last minute or during the build itself.
Therefore it was vital for our project that we had a manufacturing partner that could roll with these demanding and changing processes.
Philtronics were able to scale up from a handful of machines, to a batch of 30, to our first commercial batch of 90.
There are more than 20,000 Braille readers in the UK, hundreds of thousands around the world. Canute has now been distributed to customers on five different continents, improving peoples' access to the written word. We look forward to distributing hundreds more over the next twelve months.
To make that sort of impact on people's lives with an original, complex and demanding product, you need to be working with the right manufacturer.
Personal note:
When the Canute Braille e-reader project came about, it struck a chord with me having 2 blind family members affected by retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a genetic disorder that slowly decreases the peripheral vision of the patient leading to “tunnel vision” and blindness over time.
My uncle who is in his eighties lived his early adult life with my parents. When his sight declined in his thirties and working on the farm became dangerous, he moved to Paris where he landed a job with an organisation called “Association Valentin Haüy” created in 1917, which transferred books and articles into Braille to enable wounded soldiers who became blind during WW1 to read.
This charity now known as “Le Livre de l’Aveugle”, the Blind Person’s Book, evolved over time and focuses on school books.
Despite his visual impairment, my uncle has lived a happy life turning books and articles into Braille for other Braille readers. I still remember the stacks of bulky cream Braille books we kept at home, thinking how clever he was to be able to read these characters.
As time went by, audio books became popular and when my brother slowly turned blind in his late 20s, I thought he may turn to Braille but he struggled with it. It wasn’t for the lack of ability as he managed to re-train as a physiotherapist and now runs his own clinic. They say anything is possible when you put your mind to it and I am very proud of his achievement.
Being able to read is a privilege that a lot of us take for granted. Canute 360 is an amazing product able to condense an entire Braille library into one simple affordable reading device!
Being involved in getting this product to market has been extremely rewarding. Although we are just
the manufacturer, we have turned a prototype into production volume and helped make a difference. For more information on our device manufacturing services, please click on this link.
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