Autodesk customer success story Saito Separator Limited

It is not practical to have a department

specialized in analysis, while outsourcing

the analysis is costly, so the best way to get

highly accurate results is for the designers

themselves to perform the analysis.

However, since advanced analysis software

is too complicated for the designers to

use, tools such as Inventor and Simulation

Mechanical are the ideal choices. Designers

can use these tools at ease whenever they

come up with something and thus can take

full advantage of them.

- Yukio Okamoto Saito Separator Limited

Engineering Department Second Design Section

Section Chief

Saito Separator Limited uses Autodesk 3D software tools to provide the competitive advantage needed to compete globally

Meeting tighter deadlines and cost reduction demands are possible by removing defects in advance by applying interference check and analysis

The analysis tool makes it possible to check the stress distribution immediately

Separation type continuous system centrifugal separator ADS series that adapts to food/ beverage/pharmaceutical/chemical/general industry specifications

Innovative design methods for faster delivery

As the name suggests, Saito Separator Limited is specialized in the designing/manufacturing/selling of centrifugal separators. With their unique technology and know-how accumulated over the past 70 years, they have been supplying various centrifugal separators to a wide range of industries such as the food and beverage business, the effluent treatment industry, and the chemical industry. As the business grows not only within Japan but also in other Asian countries, they have literally become a global manufacturer with superior technology competing with major European manufacturers. Okamoto leads the designers in the engineering department second design section.

"The centrifugal separator rotates the object at a high-speed and separates with its specific gravity difference. The demand for the product differs for each customer (such as separating liquids like water and oil, or separating solid and liquid like bean-curd and soy milk) and specifications such as the rotation speed need to be adapted accordingly. Therefore, almost all orders are made-to-order. "

Not many manufacturers have the know-how of various centrifugal separators, and the company is successfully competing with both Japan and overseas major manufacturers by responding to various customer demands. The customers' demand for the company is also increasingly sophisticated.

"What's escalating in recent years is shorter delivery times. Normally, we make the delivery about 3 months after we receive the order, but if we spend a month designing to fulfill the customer's demands, it becomes difficult to make the delivery on time. "

As the the company provides made-to-order products, repeated prototyping may not be affordable, and products are often tested in the field. If the product was unable to function as expected or caused any trouble, it could lead to a significant delay in the delivery. Therefore, a reformation of design methodology was also necessary to achieve a shorter delivery time.

"If we remove the defects in advance by applying an interference check and analysis and not just rely on our intuition and experience, it can result in shorter delivery times and cost reductions. “As we already had started to transfer to 3D, we thought we would be able to take advantage of 3D models.” For this reason, the company made preparations to switch from AutoCAD Mechanical to Autodesk Product Design Suite. As a long time AutoCAD user, they chose Inventor because it was necessary to utilize a vast amount of information asset, primarily of 2D drawings. Shu talks about how he worked with the 3D technology under Okamoto.

Company

Saito Separator Limited Location

Ota-ku, Tokyo

Software

Autodesk® Simulation Mechanical Autodesk® Product Design Suite

Autodesk customer success story Saito Separator Limited

Yukio Okamoto, Saito Separator Limited Engineering Department Second Design Section, Section Chief

Kunigen Shu, Saito Separator Limited Engineering Department Second Design Section

Compete with "the world" with more efficient, streamlined, and higher quality design

by deeply and widely utilizing Inventor and Simulation Mechanical

Pole of vertical centrifugal separator designed by Inventor

“When I first used Inventor, I was really surprised. It is just so easy to use. The transfer to the 3D designing went very smoothly. As you can visualize the image as is, there are less mistakes, and verification checks are very easy. Rework due to error is probably less than half compared to the past. As we became more familiar with the 3D, we started to think that we could perform more advanced analysis by ourselves. “

The use of the analysis tool by designers will further evolve the 3D designs "Our company does not have an analysis department, and for new model development, we have been deciding "where to place the reinforcement" or "how thick the parts should be" from our past experience and hand calculations. However, it is difficult to calculate by hand for products with complicated shapes. We were outsourcing the analysis, but it was costing us both time and money." (Okamoto)

What became the problem here was the special characteristics of the centrifugal separator itself. To perform high precision analysis, knowledge of the target machine is required as well. However, when it comes to special machines like the centrifugal separator, proper analysis results cannot be obtained even by an analysis specialist unless they are familiar with each machine's characteristics. For that reason, outsourcing the analysis took some time, but was unavoidable.

"The designers know about the machines the best. So if we want to "analyze a certain structure" or "quickly check something" during the design process, it will be much faster if the designers themselves can use the analysis tool. When I saw how smoothly Inventor adapted, I proposed that we should immediately try with the analysis as well." (Okamoto)

As the tool for this, Autodesk's Simulation Mechanical was chosen in order to utilize the 3D model created by Inventor. This is a fast, accurate, and highly flexible mechanical simulation tool made for designers. First, Shu did the 2-day training and learned the basic operation of Simulation Mechanical, and then started the operation for design practice. He first applied this to the structural analysis of the vertical centrifugal separator's pole.

"Our plan was to improve the efficiency of separation by increasing the rotation speed of the vertical centrifugal separator from maximum 4,500 times per minute to 6,000 times per minute. This product was created with plenty of safety factors by manual calculation, and by using structural analysis, we tried to verify how much we can raise the rotation speed without much alternation, or if there was a place that needed a shape change." (Shu)

Up to now, they had to go through all the trouble and calculate by hand for complicated shape centrifugal separators, but with the 3D model created by Inventor and Simulation Mechanical, they are able to get immediate results. Moreover, Simulation Mechanical displays where the stress is concentrated and where it will weaken in a form that anyone can understand at a glance.

"In the end, we found out that we are unable to raise to the target rotation speed unless we use a stronger material, and being creative with the structural design was not enough. If we didn't have Simulation Mechanical, we might have increased the rotation speed all at once which might have caused some trouble." (Okamoto)

Currently, there are not many examples of application of Simulation Mechanical for this company, as they have just started to use it for their designs. However, this steady series of successes are spreading to fields other than the centrifugal separator. Very recently, they produced a stand to set up the centrifugal separator for one of their customers. The analysis of Simulation Mechanical was applied to this design as well. The centrifugal separator stand requires strength to resolve the issues of weight and vibration. They have been using thick stainless steel plate and inserting multiple beams, but much waste was found after analyzing with Simulation Mechanical.

“As a result, we have eliminated one of the three pillars and were able to reduce the cost by a quarter to a third.” (Shu)

The company currently bases 3D design by using Inventor, and in regard to new products, the interference check and design examination using Inventor tool has become the common process for the designers. Its optimization and cost reduction effect were a huge impact, but Okamoto and his team have already started to move forward to the next design innovation. First, they must promote and further utilize the analysis made by Simulation Mechanical analysis that Shu has been working on.

"We are unable to compete with the big global companies with our previous methods. Whether we use Inventor or Simulation Mechanical, we should deeply and widely utilize them to design more efficiently with higher quality and not waste space. Especially for Simulation Mechanical, we would like to improve the analysis accuracy by performing demonstrations along with analysis, and create opportunities where all designers can study and learn. "

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