Overview

During my time at NxStage, I was asked to help out with injection molded part designs. For this project, a part had to be designed to lock a tube connector in place. This tube connector piece can be seen in the first picture to the right.

Problem

The piece had to be designed in such a way that the connection could only be loaded in that specific orientation, with the ports facing to the right. If the piece is installed in a different orientation, it will prevent proper pathing for the surrounding tubes.

Action

To achieve this, the part was designed as a base to wrap around the luer cover. Sections off of the base fan out to line up with the ports on the right and the circular side on the left of the connector. Two early iterations can be seen to the right.

Later designs further optimized the part for the molding process, smoothing sections to avoid air traps and keeping a nominal wall thickness around the part to avoid pressure spikes.

Result

With the part designed to only load in the correct orientation, this reduces the need for training and prevents problems arising from errant installation.

This project was a great introduction into designing with injection molding and usability considerations. Nxstage has an experienced usability and human factors team. They were able to give insight into how a user would interact with certain designs and which designs would be most intuitive to use.