Uson Astra Dash – 2023
4-Bay Leak Testing Unit
For over 50 years, Uson has been at the forefront of leak testing and fully customized testing systems. First used by NASA’s space program, their testers are now used by companies in the automotive, medical, and packaging industries, where they perform critical, sometimes life-saving, quality control.
Continuing to innovate, Uson approached Propulsion for help in designing their next industry-leading leak tester, the Astra Dash. This new leak tester would be modular, allowing for more customization and repairability than their previous testers. Our work on the Astra Dash was extensive. We began with generating concepts for the enclosure design, and then once a direction was chosen, we spent over a year and half designing many of the mechanical systems inside the tester. In parallel, we also designed the product branding and user interface.
Housing Design
Uson wanted the Astra Dash to be modern, attractive, and unique. In an industry filled with grey and beige boxes, we were excited to bring some aesthetic appeal to a leak tester. But the tester couldn’t look too out of place on a factory floor, either. It still had to look like a professional industrial tool – a fine line to walk. We began by generating concepts for the outer housing design with these parameters in mind, also paying attention to ergonomics and usability.
The design of the Astra Dash enclosure provided a few challenges. The overall height and width of the tester was already set in stone, so our concepts were limited to a certain size. Additionally, to avoid long lead times, Uson had already chosen and ordered the specific screen that was to be used. Therefore, our design had to incorporate this screen and had to play well with the grey color of the screen’s bezel. After a few rounds of exploration, we landed on a design that would be sure to turn heads in the industrial product space.
Engineering
Though Uson is a leader in leak tester design, they turned to us for our engineering expertise in mechanism design, sheet metal design, and design for manufacturability. Entailing over a year and a half of work, this product was one of our biggest engineering undertakings ever.
The innovation behind the Astra Dash is the swappable and customizable channel box. Each channel box has the components necessary for a specific leak testing procedure and can be customized for each of Uson’s customers. We designed a sheet metal housing with a careful part breakup that would easily allow each channel box to have a different number of ports, regulators, and internal components.
The docking system for the channel boxes presented a lot of challenges. Each box had to be connected to the main enclosure through an electronic connection and a pneumatic one. Therefore, we had to design new docking mechanisms that aren’t present in any other leak tester. Because extremely high pressure air is supplied to each channel box, we also had to design safety systems and fail safes that prevent a channel box from being removed before the pneumatic lines are disconnected.
One of the main tasks of the engineering phase was integrating all of the different components into the enclosure and channel boxes – PCBs, electronic connectors, gauges, regulators, manifolds.
Throughout the engineering process, we made several functional prototypes. Because production numbers of the Astra Dash will be relatively low, the manufacturing methods for making the production parts will be similar to the methods for making the prototype parts.
UX/UI
We supported Uson with development of the user interface for the Astra Dash. Because it was designed at the same time as the actual product, we were able to fully integrate the user experience of the interface with the physical experience of using the product. Special attention was paid to the sequence of menus and screens for the testing procedure to make carrying out a leak test as intuitive as possible.
Home Screen
On the left in each of the following screenshots is the interface Uson used on their older products. On the right is the interface we designed for Astra Dash. With Uson’s help, we took their existing interface and made it more consistent, intuitive, and modern.
Main Menu
Program Setups
Basic, Advanced, and Guided Modes
Designing the program menus was especially challenging because many data points and numbers from the leak tests needed to be presented on a single screen in a clear and easy-to-follow manner.
Development began with concept sketching and a broad range of forms in clay. Using ergonomics data as a basis, we explored shapes that were minimal enough to be universally appealing and not “over-fit”
Branding and CMF
We helped develop the branding and naming scheme for the Astra Dash. Because Uson intends to develop future leak testers under the same architecture with different numbers of channel boxes, we needed a family name – Astra – and a product name – Dash – to call this leak tester with four channel boxes.
“Astra” harkens to Uson’s early NASA partnership and speaks to the innovation behind this new family of leak testers. Dash connotes something something. Once the names were chosen, we developed wordmarks for each name and a branding guide to ensure a consistent application of the logos across the Dash and future Astra leak testers.
For the Astra Dash, we also developed a Colors, Materials, and Finish guide that shows how logos and colors are used on the actual product. We developed a color product scheme that looks industrial, modern, and professional, and adds some playful splashes of Uson green in meaningful places.
