Design and Development of Smart Landline Using 3D Printing Technique

Abstract

In today’s workplace be it office or home, telephones are indispensable entity, since telecommunication is a crucial and growing part of any work. However, using a traditional telephone handset often involves strenuous movement and unnatural postures such as cradling the handset between neck and shoulder, and having to stretch to reach for things. Research in office workplace ergonomics clearly indicates that use of a classic telephone handset by office workers is a major source of work-related neck and back pain. Spending prolonged periods of time on the telephone can often lead to musculoskeletal disorder like chronic neck, shoulder and upper back pain disorders. While these may seem as unimportant issues but in the long run they can potentially permanent damage to the tendons, muscles, tissues, nerves and supporting structure. Ergonomically poorly designed phone contributes to musculoskeletal symptoms. The paper at hand focuses on regeneration or modification of hand held equipment (in this case: a landline phone’s receiver) using Reverse Engineering. The regeneration is made taking into consideration the Ergonomic factors such as grip comfort and wrist strain due to prolonged usage. The modifications were done so as to incorporate major technological changes, such as converting the obsolete landline phone into a smart landline phone. After making all changes, the new product was manufactured using 3D printing machine ProJet460 installed at JMI, New Delhi. The prototype was then compared to the original model on dimensional accuracy, grip comfort and wrist strain and its advantages, disadvantages and limitations were noted.