product design &
design for manufacturing

Outdoor Furniture

David Burkhardt This set of outdoor furniture can be made from just two types of recycled wood. The design is inspired by Will Holman's Scrap Table (Guerilla furniture), but uses other proportions and simplified materials: generic 4x6 roof lath and 2x10 cm board.

The tapered legs are stressed to give necessary stiffness to the thin board. Contrary to Holmans design, the legs are not interconnected by threaded rods. Non-triangulated beams do not add much stability to the space frame, so they were left out.

Maya Server

David Burkhardt Maya is a Server designed and engineered by David Burkhardt for Protonet GmbH.

Protonet wanted a design that focuses on accessability. Their goal is to enable anybody to run server Infrastructure from within an office, without needing an IT-Operator to manage it. This led to a different design approach compared to traditional rack server chassis.

The device features passive, fanless cooling, combined with a one button physical interface. Status information is given by a luminous ring around the button that can display colored light animations for different system states.

From the beginning, David Burkhardt planned the design to be scalable in production from small lots of a few hundred to several thouthand devices. The all-metal design can be made using craftsman level production methods such as cnc-lasercutting and hand-welding. More economical cnc-stamping and robot-welding are used for higher lot sizes of a few thousand.

As David Burkhardt was also conducting engineering and production ramp, it was possible to introduce manufacturing tweaks and improve processes in the design.

Through design iterations and new volume oriented manufacturing processes, it was possible to reduce the cost of manufacturing by over 50% on later production models, while at the same time improving quality and lead time compared to earlier models.

Protonet Corporate Identity

David BurkhardtWhen joining the Protonet Project as a hardware designer, the project did not have a developed corporate identity. Thus, one focus of hardware design was to create a recognition value and a language of form from scratch.

David Burkhardt joined the Protonet Project in 2009. The Company was launched in 2012 along with its first product, the Carla server. The Carla server and the Maya product of 2014, formed Protonets design language.

Guided by this design language, the graphic design agency npire created a complete set of matching screen and print design rules to create the branding Protonet is known for.

Process Optimized Technical Drawings

David Burkhardt When working for Protonet GmbH, David Burkhardt designed several parts for volume manufacturing processes:

• Aluminium extrusion of heatsink profiles
• CNC-bending of heatpipe tubes
• injection moulding of plastic parts
• cold extrusion and die forging of custom bolts

Design for these processes differs from those for prototype production by accounting for special design rules, tolerances and custom technical drawing styles. For a seamless transition from prototype to volume manufacturing, these design rules were already applied in the design stage, sometimes with significant effect on the prototype designs.

Working for Protonet, this included choosing a manufacturer and working together with them to finalize the design, process schedule and production ramp.

The picture on the left shows a 3d printed prototype for an aluminium extrusion and the later extruded part. Both pictures below compare serial production of cnc-milled parts with later injection moulded ones, one with brass inserts for integrated screw threads.

Patent DE 102013010867 B4

David Burkhardt A fanless cooling method was invented by David Burkhardt for a noiseless server design for Protonet GmbH. The method is based on positioning indiviual components inside the chassis airflow according to their allowed operating temperature range.

Heat from the processor, dissipates via a heatpipe in a heatsink on top of the chassis. This generates an airflow by induced convection, that sucks in cold air from between the harddisks. These harddisks have the lowest temperature range and are thus positioned at the bottom of the chassis in the cooler intake airflow.

This working principle was bench-tested against conventional cooling methods. The Patent was filed in 2013 and granted by DPMA in 11/2015.

Carla 2 Server

David Burkhardt & Tillmann Radmer This Server was designed for Protonet as a successor to their Carla Server of 2013. Technical layout and thermal simulation were prepared by Tillman Radmer while David Burkhardt conducted concept, design, construction, production ramp and assembly instructions.

All components are modular and can be slid out of the chassis individually. The concept uses plug-in modules, like a battery backup unit and 4G-module, to increase reliability and independence in case of a power outage or cable network breakdown.

Several parts are shared with the other products developed for Protonet. Like those other products, Carla 2 features a passive cooling. In this Application the fanless cooling can handle up to 150Watts system power.

Engineering for EMC and CE Conformity Testing

David Burkhardt David Burkhardt has been in charge for designing, testing and modifying product prototypes for FCC and CE conformity together with TÜV Nord, at Protonet GmbH.

For electronic devices, but especially those featuring radio equipment, a chassis is required that conforms to EU/CE and FCC standards, but optimizes performance for the used operating radio frequency band.

Process Engineering

David Burkhardt When designing for a startup company like Protonet, David Burkhardt was faced with ever changing pace in development and manufacturing. What started as a test batch, had to be ramped up quickly to several thousand devices. To make this evolution possible, several new processes were developed by David Burkhardt for Protonet:

• Setting up ad-hoc or permanent production lines
• designing additional tooling and software
• creating assembly instruction documents and onboarding guides

For example David Burkhardt designed rugged transport cases with reusable foam inserts for parts and components. Protonet supplied subcontractor manufacturers with these cases to speed up logistics. Upon introduction of the cases, damage caused by handling, which was frequent before, did not occure anymore. It also led to a drastic decrease in packaging waste from manufacturing and logistics.

Packaging Maya

David Burkhardt & Tobias Otto The packaging for the Maya Server of Protonet GmbH is a combined packaging for retail display as well as shipping.

The design inside is highlighting the product using slightly angled cardboard surfaces. This creates deeper shadows, more contrast and perceived three-dimensionality.

Accessoires, like cables and the manual, are stored in the top and bottom half of the packaging. Even though very little PU-foam cushioning is used inside, the package passes drop tests at twice the height of DIN 22 248 standards.

Product Photography

David Burkhardt Over time, David Burkhardt has made studio photographs for documentation, brochures and web use for Protonet GmbH and other customers. For on-site shootings a mobile photo studio setup can be deloyed.

Packaging Upcycling

David Burkhardt & Tobias Otto This cardboard packaging can serve as a desktop shelf, after beeing a packaging for the Protonet Carla server. It was designed as a retail packaging as well as for shipping by David Burkhardt and Tobias Otto.

Pieces of cardboard, which are stored in the sides for additional protection during shipping, can be fitted into lugs inside the cardboard frame to create the shelf floors. The finished desktop shelf has two floors, for A4 sized Paper and a drawer.

The design won a silver Nail for sustainability in the 2014 'ADC Award' show as well as the 'Preis für umweltfreundliches Produktdesign' (award for eco-friendly product design) in 2013.

Packaging for Carla2

Qianli Ma & David Burkhardt The packaging for Protonet's Carla 2 server may look like retail packaging. But it's also possessing considerable toughness for worldwide shipping, withstanding DIN 22 248 drop test standards.

The design uses a stressed skin principle by bracing a frame of lasercut MDF with industrial packing strap. Using the flexibility of the packing strap lined with strips of needled felt, an effective cushioning is created, while keeping ressource usage and cost down.

Prototype Jigs

David Burkhardt When working for Protonet, David Burkhardt made several jigs for prototype tooling. They can be used to test assumptions, manufacturing processes or even for a pilot production run.

Prototype tooling was necessary because Protonet favoured a product development strategy of a 'minimum viable product'. This is a strategy is mostly used in modern Software Development, to gather insights with lower cost and risks, before developing all product features in detail.

Constructed mostly from 3d printed parts, wood and little use of machined parts, these simple hand-operated jigs can be made in few hours or days of work. Compared to outsourced tool engineering, this saves weeks or months in lead time that can be spent on product design iterations.

Originally designed to only make up a single prototype, some of these tools made for Protonet served for much longer in volume production.

Projekt Aal

David Burkhardt David Burkhardt worked on the concept of a modular smart home server for Protonet. This started with research into physical user interfaces, including tangible, graspable user interfaces.

Upon request of the client, several formfactors for servers and modules have been tested, using mechanical and electrical connectors for interaction modules and non-interaction modules.

Trade Fair Booth

David Burkhardt & Alexander Joly A trade fair booth for Protonet that embeds the protonet design language. It was used on the IMM Cologne 2015 and CeBit exhibitions.

The booth was designed to be reusable for later exhibitions. Three slim hexagonal LED panels with sheetmetal enclosures were built from scratch by David Burkhardt, whereas the main walls of the booth were supplied by carpenter and designer Alexander Joly from Bauer + Planer. A custom trolley and storing boxes for transport, storage and reuse completed the set.

Point of Sale

David Burkhardt & Qianli Ma This point-of-sale display has been designed by David Burkhardt together with Neue Farben (Software) and Alexander Joly (wooden stand). Assembly, wiring and 3d printed mechanical connecting blocks have been implemented by Qianli Ma.

It features a touchscreen interface and speaker, to deliver information and interaction methods to the user. The Onscreen Interface can be managed and updated remotely.

The display is designed for usage in retail stores, trade fair or event situations.

Cowboy Cooking Knife

David Burkhardt A hole in the blade of this knife allows for new chopping and handling methods.

The design was made in a class on the topic food in design and art, led by visting Professor Alexa Lixfeld.

Vintage Boat Maintenance

David Burkhardt Hamburg has a heritage of swimming workshops, offices and houses called "Hafenlieger".

With the 'Hamburger Hafen Lieger Verband e.V.', David Burkhardt helped to preserve floating houses that were up to 120 years old. He also did research on the historical role of the Hafenlieger and created public relations materials such as the website, photographs and print material for the organization.

Spring Scissors

David Burkhardt In 2007, a local scissors manufacturer wanted to launch a new retail brand for scissors. As an original manufacturer, the client already produced scissors for several well-known retail brands, but wanted to have a retail marque of their own. The client asked Prof. Glen Oliver Loew of the HfbK, to create a student team to come up with design ideas that would have recognition value.

Spring scissors are not new, in fact, they are some of the earliest examples of scissors in human history. But since then, the concept of a spring scissor, which stays open by itself and closes when pressed, has been reduced to a few niche applications like sheep-shearing.

Not rightly so: Scissor shears have unique strengths. It is easier to cut along curved shapes, since there is no link at the end of the blades.

Open Sauce

David Burkhardt, Paul Geisler, Ulf Freyhoff R4B30157 of the melfa RM-501 family by Mitsubishi is a retired industrial robot.

In its free time it likes to cook: With the help from the people at the 'Institut für Telenautik' at HfbK, it learned to make pasta and tomato sauce. The pasta is made from fresh dough and the tomatos for the sauce are freshly chopped by the robot.

It did not contribute to any social insurance or pension rates during its working time before retirement, but R4B30157 at least donates its own cooking recipes to public domain. That is why it has its own Twitter account and writes its tweets in Melfa language, for other Melfa robots to understand and reuse.

Reciprocating chaos

David Burkhardt This Installation creates a chaotic beat by using a triple magnet pendulum. While slowly oscillating to a stop, endless new rythms are created.

It was shown at the HfbK yearly exhibit together with other works on the chaos theory that was discussed in a class led by visiting Professor Nicola Richter.

Fruchtsuppe

Alexej Hermann, David Burkhardt, Esther Stühmer, Philippe Nielsen, Seyon Han, Stella Dahms A soup bowl, serving twelve people.

Eating out of the same giant bowl and its hidden excentric shape, sparked diverse philosophical, political and personal conversations among the ones using it.

This bowl was part of a class on the topic of food in design and art, led by visting Professor Alexa Lixfeld. It was exhibited first at the DMY 2008 in Berlin, later at the Bitfilm Festival and at the HfbK yearly exhibition in Hamburg.