Abstract
Design for additive manufacturing is adopted to help solve problems inherent to attaching active personal sampler systems to workers for monitoring their breathing zone. A novel and parametric 3D printable clip system was designed with an open source Computer-aided design (CAD) system and was additively manufactured. The concept was first tested with a simple clip design, and when it was found to be functional, the ability of the innovative and open source design to be extended to other applications was demonstrated by designing another tooling system. The clip system was tested for mechanical stress test to establish a minimum lifetime of 5000 openings, a cleaning test, and a supply chain test. The designs were also tested three times in field conditions. The design cost and functionalities of the clip system were compared to commercial systems. This study presents an innovative custom-designed clip system that can aid in attaching different tools for personal exposure measurement to a worker’s harness without hindering the operation of the worker. The customizable clip system opens new possibilities for occupational health professionals since the basic design can be altered to hold different kinds of samplers and tools. The solution is shared using an open source methodology.
Highlights
The field of occupational health varies with the monitoring of working environment air quality being important in traditional fields ranging from mining to pig farming and new emerging areas such as 3D printing [1,2,3]
The hose holder clip was printed with two different harness widths (25 and 30 mm) to prove that the parametric design functioned as planned
This study successfully described the development, design, and testing of a novel 3D printable open source clip system for attaching personal exposure samplers to harnesses
Summary
The field of occupational health varies with the monitoring of working environment air quality being important in traditional fields ranging from mining to pig farming and new emerging areas such as 3D printing [1,2,3]. Sci. 2020, 10, 6671 sample the breathing zone of the workers, which is conventionally defined as the area immediately surrounding a worker’s nose and mouth within 30 cm [4]. The purpose of air sampling in a worker’s breathing zone in the workplace is to identify and especially, quantify levels of impurities that worker is exposed during working hours. This is to ensure that workers are not exposed to dangerous levels of airborne contaminants such as dust, biological agents, toxic chemicals, or nanoparticles [5,6,7] and that the protective measures are adequate. Cyclone samplers can be utilized to measure respirable dust [4]
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