DESIGNING AND MANUFACTURING VEHICLE FLOOR TRAYS

1 . A process for manufacturing a vehicle floor tray, comprising the steps of:

digitally measuring the three-dimensional position of a plurality of points on a surface of a vehicle foot well for which the vehicle floor tray is to be provided;

storing said points in a memory;

using the stored points to construct a model of the vehicle foot well surface;

using the model of the vehicle foot well surface to construct a three-dimensional image of a vehicle floor tray;

using the stored three-dimensional image to construct a mold for the vehicle floor tray; and

manufacturing the vehicle floor tray by molding polymer material in the mold.

2 . The process of claim 1 , wherein said step of digitally measuring the three-dimensional position of the points on the surface of the vehicle foot well comprises using a coordinate measurement machine (CMM).

3 . The process of claim 1 , and further comprising the steps of:

connecting together groups of the stored points with B-splines; and

lofting between the B-splines to create areal segments of the surface of the vehicle foot well model.

4 . The process of claim 1 , and wherein said step of constructing the three-dimensional image of the vehicle floor tray further comprises the steps of:

establishing a top sketch plane to intersect the vehicle foot well model and to establish a top margin of the vehicle floor tray;

establishing a bottom sketch plane to be at the lowest elevation of the vehicle floor tray image to be created; and

drawing sidewalls between the top sketch plane and the bottom sketch plane to approximate corresponding sidewalls of the vehicle foot well tray.

5 . The process of claim 1 , and further comprising the step of:

tilting the top sketch plane so that it is at an angle to a floor of the vehicle foot well model, such that the produced vehicle floor tray is deeper in a direction toward the vehicle firewall than it is toward a seat of the occupant.

6 . The process of claim 1 , and further comprising the step of modifying the drawn sidewalls of the three-dimensional image of the vehicle floor tray to conform at least the upper two-thirds of the area of the outer surface of the sidewalls nearest to the top margin to respective surfaces of the vehicle foot well model, such that through those areas the sidewalls of the vehicle floor tray do not depart from the corresponding surfaces of the vehicle foot well by more than one-eighth of an inch.