Part design modifications to improve productivity in a dental chewing simulation testing machine

Abstract

Product design is a systematic approach to translate a requirement as an engineering problem with a number of intermediate steps like ideas generation, feasibility, conceptual design and then a detailed design leading to manufacturing. These intermediate steps are to be structured to solve the requirements under existing constraints and adopt a system based approach. Medical device designs are complex activity and for any one device many stakeholders raise conflicting requirements. This heterogeneous group with a number of factors makes capturing user requirements for medical device development challenging as well. It includes the system approach, ethical and research governance involved, the lead time and financial constraints. Medical and surgical instruments have one critical requirement that they are designed for contact with human body, much closer than the contact with household or industrial equipment. Because of this dual possibility of healing a problem or causing an injury, medical instruments are to be approached on the basis of product liability angle also. The problem in this research paper explains the approach followed in the antagonist holder with design modifications to the existing structure to conduct more number of tests simultaneously. A dental Chewing Simulator machine available with Saveetha Dental College was utilized for the purpose of testing and validating the results. The constraints included the safety of tests, maximize the number of tests possible and ensure that the quality of test results is not compromised from the existing procedures. Based on the concepts created, the product design was finalized and manufactured using different materials to compare their utilization for the purpose. The modified antagonist holders together can test, 24 samples at a time in comparison to the current state of 4 samples that could be tested at a time. This helped to reduce the cumulative testing time considerably.