Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/03/26/vacuum-and-hand-dryer-maker-dy.html
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So it sucks the covid-19 out’a you?
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Presumably it comes with a whole whack of extra attachments … and a retractable cord?
In seriousness though, well done.
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On the one hand - this totally makes sense vs. Ford somehow designing their own from scratch.
I’m just hoping these aren nothing like the hand-dryers and don’t sound like small jet engines and spray micro-droplets of spit all around the room.
As an aside - I’m surprised the US gov doesn’t buy the IP and patents for a good one and just distribute the manufacturing plans. It’s crazy to design them all from the beginning. PLUS - then there could be standardized plastic molds and factory tools. And you could get some efficiency going with some companies just making a couple parts.
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Apparently they haven’t actually received regulatory approval yet, and they can’t make any until that happens (which may not happen), so they kind of jumped the gun on this announcement…
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Higher res image. I don’t know ventilators from particle accelerators, but shouldn’t there be something for the humidity level?
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looks like PEEP is humidity, it’s got H2O next it.
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And it doesn’t lose suction!
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It is entirely possible that you get to building them in mass quantity faster if you design around parts you already have some tooling for (i.e. one of the existing Dyson motors, or in Ford’s case a water pump or part of the Aircon system…and by Ford I guess I might mean AC Delco or something).
It is also possible that this isn’t true and sharing a set of plans would go much faster.
…so I hope whatever works best is what gets done 
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You’re right that that is the aim- this is designed around the motors, air pumps and HEPA filters from existing Dyson products.
Also, note that a lot of the design work was done by TTP, an employee-owned engineering and technology consultancy near Cambridge. While they may not know as much about pumping air as Dyson, they have much more experience designing medical equipment.
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& Ford’s efforts are being supported by GE Healthcare employees. I imagine a lot of this is going on.
I don’t know if Haynes had any “expert help” in converting some production lines and all of it’s cotton stockpiles to producing N95 masks, but I imagine there is no shortage of (actual) experts willing to help.
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Yeah, for all we know this machine could kill more people than it save.
Just nationalize the already existing ventilator factories and crank the production to 11.
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well I guess we’ll be ready for the 2nd or 3rd wave every five months or when there’s a new strain like the flu every year, because there’s no way any company is cranking these out until months from now
also hope none of them are using wifi to do firmware updates or remote monitoring/adjustment or there is going to be so much death when they are hacked by russia or north korea
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There are allegations that the government is ignoring existing ventilator manufacturers in favour of Conservative Party donors.
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That is not how modern manufacturing and supply chains work, at all. You can’t just “crank production to 11” unless you
- make all your parts from a scratch (almost nobody does this)
and
- Are underusing your current manufacturing plant. ( In general, capital equipment is expensive, so you try to have it fully utilized all the time. Bringing up another assembly line takes time, and a lot of capital)
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Most vents have a separate humidifier, sort of a hooka pipe thing hanging off the end. Pouring water on top of that delicate electronic gear is probably not a good idea!
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No, cmH2O is the standard measure of pressure on these things.
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Ford didn’t design theirs from scratch, it (re)uses existing parts for quick assembly. Unless you mean that they didnt base their design on something existing, which there’s no way to tell that’s the case or not unless you have a contact at Ford.
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Yeah, years of globalisation, factory relocation and just-in-time production is now showing its limits.
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