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For a manufacturer of medical devices, a problematic task was separating specially-coated wires.
The method was to use a razor blade to scrape the wire, which involved
painful pinch grips plus was time consuming. A hand wire-stripper
had been tried in the past, but the repetitive hand motions and high
grasping forces involved from the wire-stripper quickly led to its
rejection.
After
reviewing and trying the task, Dan went to a nearby hardware store,
purchased a short length of PVC pipe and small vise with a simple vacuum
clamp. He used the vise as a fixture for the hand wire stripper,
then slipped the PVC pipe over the other handle of the wire stripper to
increase leverage. This rudimentary contraption accomplished
dramatically faster and easier.
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How do you
know how to go about coming up with a solution like this? The
starting rule of thumb is "don't use your hand as a fixture," whether
for the wire stripper, the razor blade, or the wire. The wire
stripper worked well, but needed to be secured with a fixture, easily
enough provided with the small portable vise.
To reduce
the hand force, the trick is to think through all the basic strategies
for reducing exertion. In this case, adding a simple lever flowed
from that mental exercise.
Follow-up
evaluation revealed that employees were having difficulty putting the
wire in the correct slot on the wire stripper. Duck tape solved
that problem by covering up the unneeded slots and creating a sort of
funnel to guide the wire into place.
Cost $28.43
(including full roll of duck tape)
