GARY APPLEBY

Gary Appleby, Engineering and HMPS Manager

Meet Gary Appleby, the Engineering and HMPS Manager here at CBS. Gary heads up a talented team of Engineers working alongside the Design team in New Product Development. He’s been at CBS for a little over five years, starting as a Mechanical Design Engineer when the team was much smaller. Since then, Gary has built the team to include new areas of expertise such as; injection mould tooling and FEA structural analysis.

“As part of my role as Manager, I’m still very involved with projects and take lead from a technical perspective. I support the product designers to take concepts and prototypes through to manufacture. Along the way there are significant design challenges and hurdles to overcome to meet the requirements of our vigorous testing programs. This allows us to ensure high quality products enter the market.”

“Once happy with the prototyping testing, I confirm the material selection, manufacturing processes for components, and then issue out CAD and technical drawings to our suppliers. I work with our manufacturers in India and Asia to value engineer our designs to the most cost effective and efficient solutions. Once the tooling is designed and built, I support the suppliers by visiting them to validate our components are manufactured to CBS’s high-quality requirements. This usually consists of various high-level problem-solving activities to take the project through development into launch.”

Gary-Fishing

“Outside of work I’m a keen angler, I thoroughly enjoy DIY, my latest project throughout the lockdown period has been working to transform a Transit van into a campervan for my girlfriend and I, plus Monty our Cocker Spaniel, to holiday around the U.K. But my real passion lies in scuba diving. I picked up the hobby while backpacking in my early twenties. I have dived many places around the world; shipwrecks in Cyprus and Bali, Bull shark diving in Mexico, drift dives on underwater cliff faces in Malaysia to my all-time favourite ‘Sardine run’ in Cebu, Philippines. Where after 12 years of searching for an opportunity to see Whale sharks, I see them in their natural habitat feasting on the abundance of fish.”

Gary-Dog-2021
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Gary’s role in launching Monto

“My main role in the launch of Monto was to support Alex Lau the Lead Designer to take the product from concept stage to a working prototype. Thereafter my key responsibility was to take the product into manufacture with our manufacturer out in China.”

“There were several challenges with the Monto project, but the key difficulty was the main structural injection moulding. This component is the heart of the design, as all the other parts are interlinked, which has a cascading effect to every component. One obstacle with this part was ensuring the overall flatness while maintaining structural integrity of such a large moulding. Multiple materials were available to use which allowed easier manufacturing to ensure dimensional flatness, but the material needed to act as a bearing as well as being structurally sound. To overcome this challenge I organised mould flow analysis of the component, a newly introduced concept to CBS at the time which has now been incorporated into our development process, long before going into tooling to ensure what material we planned to use was suitable to meet the specification. After many tooling trials, a change of material brand, a visit to China and multiple early morning calls with our supplying company we have a stable manufacturing process which is controlled and meets the dimensional, aesthetical and performance requirements.”


“In my opinion, the key feature of Monto that is most exciting is its functional use. Monto allows for users to easily retrofit to their current desk system for sit-stand use. The synchronised movement of the legs and mechanical components inside the assembly are amazing to witness. And as with every project it’s great to be personally close to helping turn an idea into reality, being involved in the design and development all the way through to manufacture.”

The Finished Product

Monto-Standing

MONTO – SIT STAND RISER

It’s portable and can be retrofitted to established workstations. Used in conjunction with a CBS dynamic monitor arm or laptop support, Monto effortlessly transforms any fixed desk into a height adjustable workstation for standing or seated working.

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