Designing and manufacturing vehicle floor trays

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, said step of using the model comprising a plurality of substeps, the substeps including
• establishing a top sketch plane to intersect the model of the vehicle foot well surface and to establish a top margin of the vehicle floor tray, an intersection of the top sketch plane and the model of the vehicle foot well surface defining a top sketch plane locus;
• establishing a bottom sketch plane to be at a lowest elevation of the three-dimensional image of the vehicle floor;
• defining a bottom sketch plane locus at an approximate marginal outline of a floor/firewall segment of the model of the vehicle foot well surface;
• and
• drawing sidewalls between the top sketch plane and the bottom sketch plane to approximate corresponding sidewalls of the model of the vehicle foot well surface, the substep of drawing sidewalls including the substep of drawing lines between points on the top sketch plane locus and respective points on the bottom sketch plane locus;
• fitting curves between the drawn sidewalls and points on the floor/firewall segment to approximate curved transitions of the model of the vehicle foot well surface;
• creating a vehicle tray data file from the three-dimensional image of the vehicle floor tray;
• using the vehicle tray data file to make a vehicle floor tray vacuum mold;
• and
• using the vehicle floor tray vacuum mold, molding a vehicle floor tray from a sheet of thermoplastic polymeric material.