Konecranes, a company that manufactures chain hoists, turned to GrabCAD's community of over 1 million engineers to crowdsource ideas for a chain wear indicator through an engineering challenge. 43 engineers submitted design entries, with cash awards given to the top 4 designs. Konecranes found that crowdsourcing generated a larger variety and higher quality of ideas faster and cheaper than developing ideas internally.

1. The new way to solve engineering challenges

2. Konecranes wanted to collect ideas for a
chain wear indicator for their chain hoist.

3. Normally, they would look
for ideas within their own
engineering team.

4. Instead, they turned to the over 1 million
engineers on GrabCAD.

5. Here's how GrabCADrs submitted a larger
variety and higher quality ideas
faster than ever.

6. The Challenge
Design a chain wear detector
Make it mechanical
Allow for 5 different chain sizes
Use a specific chain wear limit
Keep production costs low
Cash awards of $6,000 USD for best designs

7. 43 entries

8. 1st place - Antonio Carlos Babler
grabcad.com/library/switch-chain-wear-indicator

9. 2nd place - Simonr
grabcad.com/library/mechanical-chain-wear-indicator

10. 3rd place - Paul Tripon
grabcad.com/library/chain-wear-indicator--4

11. 4th place - Yadwinder Paul Singh
grabcad.com/library/chain-elongation-indicator

12. “The GrabCAD Challenge was a good experience for us to
understand the possibilities of crowdsourcing. We did not have
our own resources available to focus on this [problem].
After going through GrabCAD… it was easy for us to continue
internally with the best ideas. We would estimate that we could
do the idea development 50% cheaper this way, compared to
doing it on our own.” --Konecranes

13. Learn more:
Chain Wear Indicator Engineering Challenge Results on GrabCAD
#crowdsourcing
#openengineering
#productdesign
#industrialdesign
#CollaborativeProductDesign
#konecranes
#grabcad
#chainhoist