A major verinary diagnostic company needed to simplify and unify their entire line of diagnostic equipment. Their former business model was to purchase and rebrand equipment made by other manufacturers which limited their ablity to optimize them as a system.
My solution was to create a unified enclosure language that used low cost repeatable elements that could adapt to all diagnostic instruments. This allowed us to save costs and standardize the user experience.
In order to get buy-in from their current and new investors, I designed trade show demo units that demonstrated chemistry, hematology, immunology, urinalysis and bacteriology systems with an integrated shelf space below. These semi-working demo units were created and produced in 7 weeks.
To avoid the long lead time needed for custom displays, I designed a floating panel that actually contained a working Windows Surface Pro II. These could be and have been replaced since then with low cost off the shelf displays procurred in Asia.
I worked closely with Gener8 software to create a initial GUI that mimicked the workflow of each device while operating motorized doors and drawers for consumables.
I designed the enclosure system using thick gauge, powder coated 5052 aluminum. Bends were made on a CNC controlled break to create smooth, repeatable contours. The thicker material allowed a more finished edge treatment without the need for the typical “weld and grind” finish so common in sheet metal instruments. This cleaner, higher end look is demonstrated in the promotional video I created for Gener8.
The initial concepts were all envisioned to use sheet metal construction to get to the market quickly, avoiding cost and lead time of injection molded tooling. The initial concepts were individual units, but progressed into a laterally extruded design (bottom right) that unified the design and allowed differing width’s of diagnostic instruments to be utilized while all appearing as a unified whole.