USE CASE

GERMAN EXPERTISE FOR INTERNATIONAL USE

Reducing water consumption in agriculture – that is the goal of the Raindancer. With much expertise and flexibility, HENNgineered accompanied the customer from vacuum casting the colour sample to producing the injection-moulded series.

The Raindancer uses a GPS tracker to help farmers use water more sparingly. Its automatic sector adjustment adapts the irrigation to the individual shape of the field. This prevents unwanted irrigation of certain landscape features, roads and residential areas. Even 40 year old irrigation systems can be upgraded to today’s state of the art with the Raindancer and controlled and monitored via smartphone app.

The technology of the intelligent control is packed into a palm-sized box between the sprinkler gun and riser pipe. The standard box, however, did not provide sufficient protection for the water-sensitive electronics, which are exposed to wind and weather all year round. It was therefore decided to produce a customised cover in quantities between 1,000 and 11,000 units per year. Before going into series production, farmers were asked to test the new cover in the field. Our customer also wanted to get the farmers’ opinion on the choice of colour for the Raindancer.

The HENNgineered team provided support in all of this. They made optimisation suggestions for the component, compared manufacturing processes and selected the right plastic for the adverse operating conditions. This eased the burden on the customer, a company originally from the IT sector. The HENNgineered team produced the first operational samples in two colour variants within a few days. After successful testing, the project was handed over internally to injection moulding production, which now manufactures the Raindancer in series.