Health Monitor – iPhone Supporting Products

Writer: Arvan; Role: technology manager

For majority of entrepreneurs, a great product always comes with a wonderful future. In the 21st century, health is a hot topic and an issue that people mostly concerned. One evident indication is that the investment of health products in recent years increasing significantly. A mature project is always time consuming, however, a new project requires many tests and more applications of new materials, as well as new technologies. What new materials and new technologies can give the product a new meaning in the first three months? Grefee is making a customized health monitors which can connect to your mobiles to continually monitoring your blood sugar, blood pressure, heat rates and other health issues.

Applied processes: 3D printing, replica molding, silicone molding, injection molding, casting molding.

Applied post-processing: oil spray, screen printing, laser engraving, UV, automatic dispensing.

Materials used: ABS, PC, NBR.

In 2022, Grefee produced product according to the requirements designed by Apple subsidiary companies that includes two fields: metal and plastic. It includes five sets of injection molds, one set of rubber molds, and one set of die-casting molds. The post-processing of plastic products includes oil spraying, UV, laser engraving, and silk screen printing; The post-processing of metal products involves polishing and electroplating, and we need to assemble finished products for our customers.

Front loading: evaluate customer product functionality and appearance requirements to develop a more detailed production plan:

1）Functionality, two functional points that were highlighted by our team. One is the clamp arm, and the multifunctional performance of the clamp arm ensures a wider range of usage environments for the product. The second function is the button, and we need to verify the function and reliability of the button to ensure that the function still functioning properly even after 100000 attempts. We took action immediately by arranging a replica process and make a prototype according to the product requirements to verify the functionality and reliability of the product

2）Appearance requirements: due to the product characteristics and working environment, the entire plastic product has various appearance requirements, including general polishing of the shell, high polishing of buttons and lenses, and matte rubber pads. It also provides good reference with better and more suitable material selection in mold manufacturing, as well as the quotations.

Manufacturability assessment: Evaluate based on customer requirements and annual market demand to provide customers with more reliable and economical production solutions, for example, if the raw material for the new product’s lenses is PMMA, Grefee recommended PC as PC is more resilient than PMMA, suits the products needs better in terms of working environment and possibility of the lens rapture when dropped.

After our professional evaluation in the early stage, including technical information on product process selection, quality assurance, production cycle, cost control, and whether the product is suitable for this production process, as well as another design drawings developed by Grefee working team, the production costs and assembly difficulty were reduced. The customer was satisfied with to our opinions and we gained our customer’s respect through our professionalism. Eventually, Grefee provided a suitable sample for final production within a week.

Here are several solutions we offer to our clients:

(Figure 1): Optimize two products into one to reduce mold costs.

(Figure 2): Optimize product assembly plan and beautify product appearance.

(Figure 3): Modify the product structure to ensure that the mold strength is suitable for mass production.

(Figure 4): Changing the product assembly method to reduce assembly workload.

The original picture shows the assembly of two products. Changed to one whole after modification, reducing one set of product molds.

4 positioning columns affect aesthetics. Recommended to cancel as the Figure on the right and adhered by glue.

product structure optimizing. The slide of the current structure is too thin and too long, which is easy to break and not suitable for mass production. The installation stroke of the upper shell and cover is too long, making assembly difficult. It is recommended to modify as shown in the right figure. The modified slide is thicker and stronger, with shorter stroke and shorter production cycle. The modified assembly method will also be changed, please refer to the next page for details.

Verification testing: We have completed the whole assembly of several sets of samples with the customer to find out whether there were still any unreasonable aspects, such as testing whether the clamping arm strength is suitable for clamping T-shirts and suits at the same time, whether the button height will be higher than the lens after oil spraying, the functionality of button strength and rebound, and whether there will be jamming. We have recorded the data, made adjustments, and improved the product design in the next sample. We stick to the value of “growing through improvement, benefiting from improvement” to make better products to verify these issues again in the final template until mass production can be achieved.

Mold manufacturing: only within 3 days, Grefee has provided all the design drawings for customer to review and they all have been approved. We always make sure that our design philosophy is created to meet our customer product requirements.

All molds with appearance requirements are made of better S136 hardened 48-52HRC material to ensure that the appearance requirements of the products can be met, preventing abnormalities during the production process that may affect production progress and reducing the occurrence of production accidents; The moving parts at key positions of the mold are made of more wear-resistant bronze material, ensuring the stability of the mold during production. Grefee Manufacturing pursues high quality, short delivery time, continuous improvement, and casting quality (with mold photos)

Injection molding raw materials: GREFEE has very strict raw material management. We have been working with top material suppliers, and verify the material property table, origin certificate, and batch number again. All the special materials are directly imported from country of origin with certificates.

Plastic Mold – Production and Process:

As the most visible part of the entire product, lens should not have any defects. Therefore, the gate is selected within the button hole of the product, and the material is PC, which has good toughness. The gate is removed by post-processing stamping.

The periphery of the button should have uniform light guidance. Through testing, we found that when the thickness of the gate is less than 0.25, the product surface will have defects, such as flow marks. When the thickness exceeds 0.35, cracks will appear around the button hole due to stress when stamping to remove the gate. ultimately, after verification by flow analysis, we decide a 0.28 gate thickness, which can ensure that the light source of the button is uniform and that there will be no cracks around the hole when stamping the water gap.

The logo of the lens is actually quite complex, too. The first thing is the back is sprayed with silver paint as a whole, and then the logo shape is carved with laser engraving. If the laser engraving distance is too close, the radiation will burn the paint black. When the distance of the radiation is too far, a foggy black spot will appear on the front of the logo, affecting the surface effect.

Then, transfer milk white paint to the back logo area, and the thickness of the paint also has a certain impact on the brightness of the light. If the paint is printed once, the internal light source can be seen on the surface. If the paint thickness is printed twice, it will affect the penetration of the light. Eventually, a consent has obtained from customer, we decide to print the back paint once to ensure surface transparency, and apply scattered light paper to the inner frame to ensure the even light source.

As the lenses need to be glued to the center frame as a whole, the quality of the glue and the amount of glue used for each product must be unified. We use an automatic dispensing machine, which not only ensures the amount of glue used for each position, but also improves assembly efficiency. After testing, our product can ensure that the lenses and center frame will not be separated even when dropped at a height of 3 meters.

The middle frame and bottom cover need to be fixed with screws. When the screws are disassembled and removed more than twice, the internal threads of the plastic will cause the edges protrusion. We have added screw nuts at the screw positions to improve installation efficiency and ensure the functionality of the product.

Grefee has two fully automated fuel injection production lines equipped with automatic spray painting functions that automatically complete cleaning. It not only ensures quality but also significantly improves fuel injection efficiency. Grefee can achieve a  daily production as much as 50000 pieces. We also  have screen printing, transfer printing, and laser engraving machines to better meet the customer needs with a variety of processes.

Die Casting Mold – Production and Process:

The clamp arm and clamp arm fixing plate adopt die-casting process, and the post-treatment is electroplating and passivation. The assembly position size of the clamp arm and clamp arm fixing plate is very important given the function of the clamp arm allows the product to work in different dressing environments.

If the size of the clamp arm fixing groove is too large or the thickness of the fixing plate is too small, the clamp arm may swing. If the size is too tight, the front end of the clamp arm may curl up, and also a risk of the product falling. After multiple times of testing, we noticed that when the optimal size of the clamp arm and bottom cover is 2.3mm, the clamping force of the product can adapt to clothing such as T-shirts and suits at the same time.

This number of this series of assembly processes is 20. The overall quality requirements is extremely high and the internal components are extremely small. We also did some changes in order to improve production efficiency and product quality on top of the product consistency and rationality. Each workshop had a clear and detailed instructions for the assembly process precautions standards.

For example, electronic motherboards should not be stacked, and all workstations related to electronic components must be equipped with gloves to prevent hand sweat from corroding metals. We also require employees to wear static electricity elimination bracelets when entering their positions. We have extremely high control over every detail, and each battery undergoes power on testing before entering the production line. Each circuit board undergoes circuit testing before assembly, and the torque of each screw is executed according to standards.

Trial production: trial production is the final verification of the front loading, and Grefee does not have a minimum order quantity requirement. Therefore, we will produce a total of 125 sets for customers to conduct final testing and launch on the market. These 125 sets are mainly for those who are in need and will provide the feedback.

Product inspection: each process has completed in the scientific, and each process is tested and recorded to ensure that both the produced and inspected products can be traced. This ensures the goal of zero defects in every process.

Progress Management: each customer has a specific project engineer to help with the project. Our project engineers manage the production progress according to the production plan according to the time schedules for mold and product production. They also provided regularly update to the customer regarding the production, quantity of products that was completed. Meanwhile, our customers have the access to check the production status through our order management system as well.

Packaging: we do customized packaging based on the characteristics of the product to ensure that the product will be delivered to your hand safely. For this project, we use vacuum box packaging and circulation during component production. All of the products are packaged with boxes, including standard cardboard boxes and pallets that are particularly protect the products from damaging during shipping. Special products, we do like applying low film on newly produced lenses, ensure easy disassembly in the next processing step without affecting the surface of the lenses.

As this product is a supporting device for Apple, we have adopted a design similar to the Apple phone case in the packaging, with a simple yet elegant main body; The color box adopts a combination of corrugated paper and hard paper cover, and all colors and fonts are completed using a German Heidelberg printing machine. The interior is supported by white cards, and the product is fixed with EVA. The clamping position is designed for easy product removal.

Result oriented: Grefee took 34 days totally to make the entire product from concept to reality, including drawings, prototypes, testing, mold manufacturing, trial production, and mass production. customer is satisfied with our products  and also confirmed the professionalism and reliability of Grefee’s engineering team, especially our taem communication.

Why Grefee?

The complete industry chain of Grefee has attracted me, which has saved us a lot of time in research and development. This is something that other suppliers cannot achieve. I have also asked many Chinese manufacturing companies, and most suppliers told me it was impossible to complete so many processes within our due date. The big suppliers did not do small batches. GREFEE is a comprehensive manufacturing company that can complete the processes required for my finished products, and their engineers and quality control team are excellent.

In addition, I trusted them because their solutions have shown us they know what they are doing and how professional they are in this area from front loading and the later stage, especially they have come out another better ideas in terms of our design, which improves our product function and quality to suits our customer needs. I really appreciated their valuable suggetions from GREFEE engineer team.

Moreover, it was quite enjoyable to work with GREFEE because of their attitude and efficiency. Once, when we were back from the Christmas, they had already completed verification testing with videos, modification plans, and drawings for confirmation. What an efficient and wonderful experience when you work with such a professional team that knows exactly what you want. On top of that, they also provided some modifying suggestions, and almost all of these suggestions were adopted after our discussion because they turned out better than our original ideas. This never happened before with other suppliers but only GREFEE.

No matter we want a small or a large quantities, it always makes us happy. The scientific approach to quality management which made me very confident in the quality of my products. I have many suppliers who often use raw materials that do not meet the standards. I have conducted on-site inspections of GREFEE’s material warehouse, and that is very reassuring.

Furthermore, my product needs to be modified occasionally, and their feedback is also very fast. I normally can get the sample within 24 hours.

Mould display：