Taking it a step further, we saw the opportunity to markedly improve the cost-of-goods by reducing the part count from 19 to 9 injection molded parts and rethinking the architecture from what was previously an extremely laborious effort to a build that allows the manufacturing team to use the product itself as a fixture, giving critical access for wiring, soldering and testing during assembly.

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All fasteners are hidden. One fastener is user-accessible and can be seen when the mask is removed. This screw allows the user to remove the top plate and replace a HEPA filter. Clever use of snaps, hooks and fasteners throughout the product culminate to a single tamper-proof screw under the top plate to access the rest of the internals for simplified disassembly and servicing.

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The devil is in the detail: another example of this is illustrated by the dark blue soft-touch thermoplastic elastomer overmold on the front housing. The TPE has two critical functions beyond touch, cushioning and a high level of perceived quality. It isolates the buttons and allows them travel and bounce to actuate the switches. Secondly, the TPE tunnels to the inside of the front panel and forms a perimeter gasket that, when coupled with a shield, isolates the PCB and electronics from inadvertent water contact should one of the seals fail during water fill.

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We used our knowledge of injection mold tooling to multipurpose virtually every molded part, incorporating multiple side pulls (slides) and internal action (lifters) into the designs. The result is a molded part count reduction by more than half while still improving the time to assemble and test.

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