Columbia-Staver, the Thermal Management Company, offers an extensive range of services from concept development to high volume manufacturing. Columbia-Staver can tailor the offering giving our customers just the services that they truly need thereby keeping costs under control. In all cases, we maintain strict confidentiality to protect our customer’s valuable information and would recommend that a mutual NDA is in place to formalise this valuable protection.
Concept Development
At the beginning of a project Columbia-Staver would suggest a feasibility study to establish the nature of the thermal issue and the strengths and weaknesses of any existing solution. This initial phase can be as simple as using in house developed spreadsheets and rudimentary calculations or it could involve using industry recognised CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) software. In many cases Simulations provide extensive and elaborate information before significant time and money has been invested (and potentially wasted) in designing and building the product. The simulation can also be valuable throughout the project to investigate the effect of design changes and to help with performance and cost optimisation. At this stage it is often possible to establish cost estimates for prototypes and budgetary costings for production quantities.
Detail Design
The mechanical fit of the final solution into the customers system is crucial, tolerances and dimensional errors can cause delays and expense. Columbia-Staver use SolidWorks as the mechanical design software and information can be imported or exported on common platforms such as STEP and IGES. 3D solid models and 2D engineering drawings are developed and entered into a professional Documentation Control system, the customer is always in the loop and final drawing sign of obtained before manufacture. This drawing package can now be used to refine and fix the production costs and lead times for prototypes, pre-series and volume production parts.
Prototyping
Along with volume production Columbia-Staver can produce fast turn prototypes and pre-series production runs. Designs that will be manufactured by extrusion or Die-casting in production can be produced by CNC machining in our UK manufacturing facility.
Manufacturing
Columbia-Staver have been involved in supplying high volume products for the consumer market since 1972 and are happy to quote for any manufacturing volume from high technology single pieces to products that require >1M pieces per year.
