Free-form surface design and tooling

A ski boot combines complex, doubly curved free-form surfaces with high demands on ergonomics, fit and appearance. The outer shell was designed entirely with continuous, mirror-smooth surface transitions — a prerequisite for a premium appearance and clean light reflection on the finished part.

In the trailer handbrake, free organically shaped grip surfaces meet clearly defined technical areas such as bearings, connections and load transfer points. The challenge is to let styled free-form surfaces and dimensionally precise functional surfaces flow tangentially into one another without jeopardising later manufacturability in the injection mould.

For this shopping basket a deliberate, irregular crumple structure was designed directly into the free-form surface. Such organic, non-repetitive textures demand an especially high level of CAD surfacing skill, since every single fold must remain continuous, demouldable and cleanly reproducible in the tool.

The radiator grille shows the combination of a large free-form surface and a precise, repeating diamond pattern. Every single rib of the pattern follows the underlying free-form surface exactly while remaining demouldable and of uniform wall thickness — a task in which CAD surfacing competence and moulding understanding interact directly.

As a principle study, the fuel flap system shows how free-form surface design is interlocked with kinematics and mechanism layout in the earliest concept phases. Before parts are detailed we examine motion sequences, packaging and component interaction — producing concepts that can be developed consistently through to series production, technically and visually.