SMD recognizes the various needs of our customers and do our best to offer custom solutions to difficult problems. Approximately 90% of our business revolves around fully custom engineered products to meet specialized design requirements. Our off the shelf ultrasonic flow sensors serve as a template and give us a starting point for the “proof of concept” stage in each custom project.
Whether you need a simple modification to a standard part or a brand-new complex design, our team of engineers will work with you to find the perfect solution. We are ISO9001 and ISO13485 certified, making us ready and well-equipped to handle flowmeter design for any medical or industrial application.
Reasons for customizing a flow meter often include:
- Specific flow range
- Suitable body material to meet compatibility requirements for different applications
- Unique sizing or geometry
- Specialized fitting for building it into a subassembly
- Adding wireless communications
Our 5-Step Custom Flowmeter Engineering Process
Step 1: Meet With You To Understand Your Vision
At SMD, our goal is to understand your vision and make it come to life, so we want to meet with you in order to understand the target application and the complete big picture before moving forward. This meeting gives us an overview of the project, what to aim for, and helps us anticipate any roadblocks along the way. Non-Disclosure Agreements are signed and we share ideas for your custom solution, typically via conference call. While we work on your custom solution, we can also assist in picking some of our off the shelf products so you can test and get a feel for our technology in the meantime.
Step 2: Create a Written Quotation For Your Project
Once we have a good understanding of your vision, we will provide a written estimate for a deliverable prototype of your custom flowmeter, as well as a budgetary estimate for production-ready parts. This document will provide you with information on the design objectives, delivery dates of product samples, and cost breakdowns.
Step 3: Start Designing Your Custom Flowmeter
After you’ve agreed to the quote, our engineers will get to work on transforming your vision into a real flowmeter that will fit your needs. We will conduct many failure and risk assessment tests to ensure the quality of your flowmeter. Your satisfaction and approval is our #1 priority, so we are happy to provide frequent progress updates during this stage of the process.
We want our customers to be as involved in the project as they would like to be. Whether it’s just handing us a list of design specifications or scheduling weekly conference calls between our team and yours, we will turn your flowmeter into a reality. There are always tradeoffs when it comes to engineering, so we want you to be as involved in making important decisions as necessary and we will always keep you up to date with the progress of your project.
Step 4: Provide You With Product Samples
We will begin to manufacture prototypes for you to evaluate once we have an approved initial design. We work with key suppliers to ensure quality and timeliness based on your project schedule. We perform thorough in-house testing on the prototypes, but your feedback is also crucial during this stage so we know about any changes you might need before we have a production-ready flowmeter design.
Step 5: Finalize Your Flowmeter Design & Send to Production
We will formally agree on your final flowmeter design so that we can begin the production process. This process starts with finalizing all documentation, then producing the necessary tooling for manufacturing, and finally sending the design to our in-house manufacturing facilities for production.
