Porter Cable (Black & Decker)
Nail Gun
For years, the cordless nail gun mechanism developed by the tool manufacturer, PaslodeTM, has been the industry standard for its product type. Porter Cable, later acquired by Black & Decker, put D2M to the challenge of developing alternate technology for nail guns that would differentiate their products from PaslodeTM driven designs. D2M initiated an exploratory phase to produce an Idea Book of numerous concepts, before embarking on a development phase involving extensive mechanism design, prototyping, and design refinement. The final mechanism involved a new working mechanism that ultimately allowed for a 40% reduction in package size while preserving the industry standard level of power.
The Details
D2M’s innovation over the PaslodeTM design came in the development of a mechanism that increased combustion efficiency while minimizing piston length. The reduction in piston length allowed the mechanism to package into a smaller volume, ultimately resulting in greater portability for the user.
While this mechanism had great potential for reduced package size and efficiency, its practical implementation required a significant diversion from standard nail gun architectures. In the development phase of work, D2M mechanical engineers entirely redesigned the nail gun, from the feeding mechanism, to the flush of the combustion chamber, and to the fuel delivery system. Additionally, our engineers worked to improve the burn characteristics of a firing event over an experimental testing process that utilized combustion instrumentation.
D2M has been named on patents in both the U.S. and Europe for their innovations in Porter Cable / Black & Decker nail gun technology.