Leveraging Advanced Design and Novel Rapid Manufacturing Solutions to Respond to the COVID19 Pandemic

The novel Coronavirus can easily be transmitted from one person to another via respiratory droplets or direct contact with infected surfaces. Human beings have several common and shared objects that they touch daily. Door handles are among the most commonly touched surfaces. In this work, novel manufacturing solutions are developed for several hands-free door handles that were designed to reduce the COVID-19 disease vectors. In tandem with the design optimization activities, a rapid and low-cost tooling solution was developed leveraging additive manufacturing, ‘design for additive manufacturing’, and conventional design for assembly strategies. This rapid tooling approach is capable of molding high temperature thermoplastics as well as of introducing highly complex internal channels that can aid the cooling performance of the mold and component. For the case study, the mold is built in less than one week. The part geometry varied between 1 – 3% from the CAD model. The production time for a part is reduced from 3 hours to less than 2 minutes per piece. The material price per piece was significantly dropped. This solution introduces new design and manufacturing options to the engineering community. The case study highlights the merit of these approaches. © 2022 CAD Solutions, LLC.