Rubberband_valve by nanoBorg88

Last crawled date: 4 years, 1 month ago

Coronavirus is scary.
I decided to find a way of making a simple one way valve, something that can be made at home under isolation.
From what I can imagine, these sort of valves are important for ventilators, for which there are not enough in the world for the people to use in hospitals. Also the cost for these devices are a lot!. This along side a pump or collapsable container can be use to make a DIY ventilator, or so I hope. It would be amazing if this design goes on to save lives.
I came across the humble rubber band, one of the flat ones you can find about. The one I found is about 4-5 mm wide, an you should look for something similar if you decide to build this.
I came up with this design that has two one way valves pointing in opposite directions that can be completed with a single rubber band.
Theres also two covers that the center bit can be inclose in, one which has one shared output and another with two seperated output
Note: there is a side effect of using the rubber band: it makes a sound when you blow through it. You might think to make something else from this like an instrument, go ahead but please link back to here if you copy a lot of the design.
THE FILES ARE NOT THE RIGHT WAY UP!,
Fusion 360 normally exports them sideways,
for the center block lie it on your print bed so the smallest dimension (30mm) is on z axis
for the two ends you can print them with the circular sections on the bed
I used a raft for both of these bits as i don't have a heated bed and it was lifting in one of the corners.
version 2 of the box has a wider gap for the rubber band
Please leave a comment for ideas / improvements / alternatives