Broddson AB – Sweepers for the Whole World Are Freely Designed in IRONCAD

About Broddson

Broddson AB in Motala is the leading provider of street sweepers and road maintenance equipment on the Swedish market. Some of its products are exported, primarily to neighboring Nordic countries but also to Africa and the Middle East. In addition to sales, installation, and technical support , Broddson supplies spare parts and brushes through a network of suppliers and partners. The company was named Motala Company of the Year in 2020.

One popular machine is the Scandic, which uses a conveyor belt to load sand and debris onto the bed of a truck. Countries with a lot of sand, such as those in North Africa, end up with a lot of sand on their roads, and a delivery to Egypt can be seen in this video:

The Challenge

The design requirements consist of general machine design: installation of motors and other purchased components, welded beam structures, and sheet metal bending. The machines are powered by diesel, electricity, or the towing vehicle’s hydraulic system. Since Broddson designs and builds the machines in-house, they are tailored to the customer’s needs, and no one knows what the next customer will want. The previous parametric 3D software was capable, but the workflow was far too cumbersome: conditions and constraints had to be managed, and every detail had to be saved to its own file—which was of no use to Broddson.

Why IRONCAD

Engineer Richard Liljedahl watched a video on YouTube that showed how IRONCAD it worked and immediately thought, “This seems to be something completely different.” He downloaded the software, tried it out himself, and quickly got up to speed with the help of the training materials in Swedish. It also turned out that Broddsons’ key subcontractor, BTT Plåt AB in Kisa, had already been using IRONCAD for several years and could highly recommend it. The decision to switch was an easy one.

This Is How Broddson Works Today

• The design is constantly being updated in the assembly, so the designer can see what's happening
• Files are saved separately only when necessary, not before
• Handles change the cross-section of extruded profiles and snap to the center points of other parts, even in other assemblies
• 3D basic shapes, standard components, and beams are dragged from catalogs directly into the 3D environment, just like Lego
• Items are grouped in the history tree just like folders in File Explorer
• TriBall moves, copies, and rotates with precision, regardless of how the model was created

The result

The approach is more flexible, simpler, and more logically structured, and Broddson can freely customize the machines to meet the needs of any customer. General-purpose machine design—combining off-the-shelf components with in-house manufactured parts—is exactly what IRONCAD is designed for.

What I really appreciate about IRONCAD is that it works so freely and easily. It’s truly a big difference in the way we work—it’s organized more logically. You’re constantly designing within the assembly view, so you can see exactly what you’re doing. Of course, we don’t know what our next customer will want, which is why it’s such an important advantage that IRONCAD is a more flexible solution that lets us customize the machines freely.

Richard Liljedahl, Design Engineer, Broddson AB