Here at QA1 we make suspension products driveline products and rod ends for
Motorsports and Industrial OE applications. Today we're going to talk about the design
and manufacturing process of our GM upper and lower control arms.
We always try to understand who our target customer is for this project and think about what
sort of problems are they trying to solve and you know how can we help them solve that. We spend
a lot of time interacting with customers and that's our number one source of information on
on where we should go next for our products. So we're expecting more out of cars than when they
originally rolled off the line in Detroit. We know that our customers have different demands.
The control arm 2.0 project we realized that the original design of these control arms was tailored
more towards a conventional spring but we have so many customers that want to take advantage
of the versatility of a coil-over setup so we knew that we needed to design around that.
We decided it was time to just start over from the ground up what can we do better?
Make them lighter, make them stronger, use a more compact footprint that will allow for
more clearance tighter turning radiuses modern wheel and tire packages. Once we identified the
problems to solve we started the design process our in-house prototype process starts with a CAD
design and from there we rapid prototype parts on a 3D printer and we do test fits on the vehicle
and then once we feel like we have a good design that we like then after that we'll make
metal prototypes to fit in the vehicles. And so a few design features that we incorporated into our
QA1 control arms are a stamped steel lower control arm mount it's a drawn piece of steel that helps
with weight also helps with strength you don't see it a lot on control arms for for applications like
this and another thing we also did was a forged one-piece ball joint housing and that allows us
to reduce weight, increase strength, and helps with repeatability in the manufacturing process.
We also looked at two bangles two bends where they need to be how they need to come together
so that we can better utilize a robotic welder for our manufacturing process.
Once those things are all locked in and designed in then we move on to validation and testing. In
order to simulate real world testing we like to use our TUV dyno and our strength tester
to actually verify when something is going to break. You know when something might fail before
we ever put a part on a car. On our dyno we can actually simulate the worst case scenario. So like
we can take apart and basically simulate what it would be like hitting a large pothole but not just
a few times driving down a road but hundreds of thousands of times. With our strength tester we
can find what the ultimate strength of a part is so we can actually test it to
its breaking point and find out where the part will actually fail. A lot of the employee cars
that we use are fellow engineers and so when they're out driving these cars every day
they know what to look for and the average person that's driving these cars may not.
And so we can get that feedback right away that if especially if there is a problem we can
immediately fix it. With our test partners they don't know the engineering necessary that went
into the park when they install it they're going to be like most anybody else that's installing it
in their garage and when they're driving down the road they're gonna be able to more tell us what
they heard, what they felt, and not necessarily give us an opinion on what they think might be
wrong. One of the things that I'm most proud of when it comes to design of of these control arms
is the fact that they're not like anybody else's. I mean they don't look like they're just a bunch
of tubes that a guy in his garage welded together and threw these together. I mean these are
precision engineered parts that have a specific job and they are designed to do their job well.
We ensure a high quality product by starting with good materials and components at the start. We
also have various check fixtures and check process all throughout the manufacturing process and then
when the part comes together and gets assembled we have an assembly cell a dedicated station to help
minimize errors and ensure a really consistent and repeatable product. We verify accuracy with
a lot of different fixtures throughout the control arm manufacturing process. We have fixtures for
incoming parts so we have fixtures that check incoming parts make sure they're to the proper
dimensions we also have fixtures that happen while the products being welded. For our control arm
project we did a lot of work on the packaging and decided to come up with a new way to package our
control arms. We have a dedicated box and insert for both our uppers and our lowers and we took a
really hard look at how the parts held how it's presented make sure things get to the customer
without dings or scratches. These products are all brand new and developed throughout
this process and we're using them in these and future products as well. Thanks for taking the
time to check out how we manufacture our control arms. We do a lot of work to make sure that we
get quality product out. And be sure to check us out at QA1.net and also our social media channels.
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