How DuraTech Created a Simple Little Solution For a Big Problem
The situation
For some time, DuraTech had been printing flexible membrane switches for a medical equipment manufacturer. These membranes are connected to a cable that’s routed through an assembly, which is then built into the X-ray machine.
The problem arose when the manufacturer began experiencing intermittent failures of LEDs on its X-ray battery indicators at the rate of one or two per week. Considering the critical service than an X-ray machine provides, the failures were, without question, unacceptable. Although DuraTech printed only the membranes, (and wasn’t responsible for the cables or the assembly) the manufacturer knew that we had considerable background in electronics and so asked our company to determine where the failures were occurring and devise a solution to the problem.
Tim Drey, Director of Quality and Operational Excellence, saw an opportunity to help a valued customer. “I thought we could create some sort of LED light tester that would enable the customer to ensure every step and component throughout their processes was working properly. Yes, it was a little bit outside our wheelhouse, but we wanted to help.”
The solution
Drey approached Steve Roellich, Printed Electronics Development Engineer, with the issue. Roelich’s initial response: “It doesn’t really fall into what we do,” he recalled thinking. “But, personally, I enjoy solving these types of challenges.”
And so, Drey and Roellich worked with one of the customer’s engineers, who gave them access to the assembly floor to electrically test the parts in question. “Using a multimeter, we found that it was just a cable connectivity issue,” Drey said. “We then talked to some of the operators and saw how they were handling the cables. From what we learned, we thought that an effective solution would be a simple tester that would enable them to easily plug in, test and verify both our product (membranes) and the cable components were good before they spent a lot of time and labor building the sub-assemblies.”
From there, Roellich started brainstorming the tester’s design. “I thought it would be cool to create an ergonomic handle, like a flashlight, with finger grooves and grips to accommodate all different hand sizes. And, I wanted it to be really simple to use – didn’t want to over engineer it.”
Within a month, Roellich and Drey had the design and electronics down, and used DuraTech’s 3-D printer to generate a prototype tester to share with the customer.
How the LED tester worked
The X-ray battery indicator being tested had two different color LEDS – green and amber. “There are four indicators on each side for the two batteries,” Drey explained. “They’re either all green or they start to deplete. When the batteries come to the end of life, the amber LEDs indicate that.”
The prototype tester allowed the operator to push and hold a button to test the green LEDs, then release it to push an amber indicator button. “It was really that simple,” Roellich said.
The results
“The customer loved it,” Drey said. “We made a few adjustments per their feedback, but otherwise, we had a winner. We 3-D printed two final models, and that’s what they’re using today.”
“We deliberately made the decision to use the 3-D printer to keep costs low,” Roellich said. “If we had made them out of metal, say, it would have cost way too much in materials and machine time. What’s more, should one of the testers break, we can easily print a new one within a day.”
“The best part is that the customer hasn’t had any problems since they started using the testers,” Drey concluded.
The moral of the story
“Even though we identified that it wasn’t our product at issue, we wanted to help the customer,” Drey said. “We knew we could show our flexibility and capability in a very different way than they were used to.”
Roellich concurred, “We’re all about helping our customers. We enjoy trying to figure out how to make their lives easier by creating solutions to nontraditional problems.”
If you want to tap into the value-added services available at DuraTech, as well as our capabilities to meet the most challenging, high-quality, close tolerance production requirements in the industry, contact us at 608-781-2570 or get a quote here.
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