Omnifit has helped a peristaltic pump manufacturer solve a difficult fluid transfer problem by manufacturing a custom-designed fitting for the pump's tubing
The customer needed a method of connecting the peristaltic pump tubing (0.5mm internal diameter) to a female quarter-inch-28 UNF flat bottomed port.
This was difficult because the peristaltic pump tubing is soft walled and also because the internal diameter was too narrow for a conventional barbed adaptor.
The solution from Omnifit was a quarter-inch-28 male fitting with an internal titanium tube.
The peristaltic pump's tubing slides over the titanium tube, preventing compression when the fitting is tightened.
An inverted cone slides over both the peristaltic and titanium tubes, providing a compression grip when the cap is screwed on.
The cone is made from Tefzel, as the friction coefficient of a PTFE cone would be too low to prevent the tubing from being pulled out and Peek would be too hard to make a good compression grip.
The overall dimensions of the fitting's components are 10mm by 30mm.
Omnifit experimented with several different approaches before presenting a design proposal to the customer.
Prototypes were manufactured for customer trials, and once the final design was approved, Omnifit set up a Kanban system at its manufacturing facility to meet the client's delivery requirements.
