I've designed a whole lot of different parts and products in my time: Plastic, metal, lighting products, electrical products and automotive parts. I generally can look at a product and figure out why did they do that. Here's one that has me baffled.
Its the bottom of a consumer grade vacuum cleaner. Molded in the plastic is a slot (which I'd generally refer to as a bayonet mount). I can see that the mount definitely is out of normal die draw (large undercut) and requires a slide (and that tooling is definitely not cheap...) I can't figure out what that mount is for. It doesn't seem to match the cord or any of the accessories that I can see.
Any ideas on what that 'bayonet mount' is for? Why would the manufacturer spend real investment dollars for tooling something so obtuse?
Possible
- Something they use in their manufacturing process?
- Something to ensure the part control during the molding ejection process from the die? Note: I've seen molded parts get stuck in the wrong half of the tool and that can be quite ugly... The other side of the part is heavily engineered, with lots of ribs and other details.
- Could it be for planting a sales/marketing sign when the product is sitting in a sales display?
Any ideas?