Custom key design and its packaging

Context

A client asked me to design a key and its packaging. The steel blade reused an existing profile, and everything had to fit in a box with the cylinder, three keys and the ring. The head was still to be designed, recognizable on the shelf and manufacturable in series.

What I did

• Modelling in Autodesk Inventor with no under-constrained sketch.
• Five versions of the head, each one born from client feedback and 3D printed to check the dimensions by hand.
• Packaging in machined foam, with four spacers that adapt the slot to the cylinder length.
• Dimensioned drawings to ISO 129-1 and ISO 2768, and the same delivery at each version (STEP, DWG, PDF, STL).

What I noticed and learned

• Fully constraining a sketch costs ten minutes at the start and saves hours at the third change.
• Delivering a package that a client can open without me.

My mistakes

• I do not yet have feedback on the parts out of production, so the project is not quite closed.

Results

• A complete package sent to the manufacturer (drawings, material, overmolded head, foam).
• Five iterations, no model rebuilt from scratch, every delivery on time.
• A single foam for the cylinders on the market, with no mold per reference.

Tech stack