While we were developing the Husqvarna Battery blower, we also had a side project. To design a blower purely for backpack battery professional use. The intent was to offer a product which could take advantage of all the benefits that a backpack battery has i.e. no battery weight on product, increaed power (which would also equate to more noise) etc... To make a truly best in class professional blower. So we had a bunch of existing components to use and needed to share components where possible for smart cost efficient design. We also needed to add an indicator on product of how much battery power was left.

 

To do this, Christian and Tobias imagined a beautiful... shrimp.

Yes indeed, this was the first engineering layout concept, lovingly nicknamed 'the prawn'. So how to make that work with ergonomics, tooling, good grip? A tricky puzzle indeed. So being the accomodating guy I am, I gave it a shot.

But then we realized that side intake vent would work just as well, as in the first battery leaf blower. So we made a rough dirty prototype for testing. We also tried out having the battery display indicator on the side, which is not perfect for left handed users, but we tried it anyway. For a bunch of technical reasons we couldn't place it with the existing control panel.

We like lots of screws haphazardly placed on prototypes. It makes it more fun. :)

With the existing prototype to see scale.

Various sketch thoughts on how the rear connector will dock onto the product allowing for maintenance and diagnostics.

Final sketch for side view sign off on design.

I like to surface then sketch then surface then sketch then surface....

This was a combination of Tor's surface model and mine to find the right area for the air inlet.

But then, two weeks before I Ieft Husqvarna group, everything changed. Performance with a rear facing vent was actually better than side air inlets, so I begun to figure out how that would work. The team and the Industrial designer who took over the project guided it towards it's final execution, as seen in the final shots on the website.

In true powertool company style, here's some middle aged and old males stood around production line congratulating themselves. But in all seriousness, going to production is the best feeling in the world. Hope you enjoyed!