Removable Ball-Valve Chamber for Maintainable Hospital Gas Outlets
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Solution Overview
Problem
The ball-valve chamber in fluid distribution sockets, used in hospital environments for medical gases and vacuum, is difficult to access and disassemble due to its confined location and lack of grip for disassembly tools, making maintenance challenging.
Innovation Solution
An extractable ball-valve chamber with a peripheral wall and external peripheral thread, featuring a non-circular axial fluid passage section and radial wall expansions, allowing for easy screwing and unscrewing with a complementary tool, such as a hexagonal key, facilitating rapid assembly and disassembly.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Volume of moving object
If the ball-valve chamber is located in a confined space within the socket body, then the device structure is compact, but the ball-valve chamber becomes difficult to access and disassemble for maintenance
Solution Approach 1:
The ball-valve chamber is designed as a separate, extractable component that can be removed from the socket body. This segmentation allows the chamber to be accessed and maintained independently without disassembling the entire socket, resolving the contradiction between compact structure and maintenance accessibility.
Solution Approach 2:
The ball-valve chamber is extracted from the confined internal space and designed with an extraction mechanism featuring a non-circular fluid passage and peripheral thread. This allows the chamber to be easily removed using a tool, providing maintenance access while maintaining a compact overall device structure.
2Ease of repair
If the ball-valve chamber is made extractable for easy maintenance, then maintenance operations are simplified, but the device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The extraction functionality is merged into the ball-valve chamber itself through the integration of the non-circular fluid passage and peripheral thread features. This combining of maintenance features directly into the chamber design simplifies the overall device structure compared to adding separate extraction mechanisms, thus reducing device complexity while maintaining ease of repair.
3Ease of operation
If a non-circular fluid passage is used in the ball-valve chamber, then tool engagement for assembly/disassembly is improved, but manufacturing precision requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The fluid passage is designed with a non-circular, asymmetric cross-section that provides complementary geometry for tool engagement. This asymmetric shape allows simple tool insertion and rotation for assembly and disassembly operations, while the geometry can be manufactured using standard machining processes, balancing ease of operation with reasonable manufacturing precision requirements.
Data Source
Figure 1~2
Figure 3~4
Figure 5~6
AI summary
The invention relates to a fluid distribution outlet (1) with a removable ball-valve chamber (6) and nozzle guide (8), usable in a hospital building for distributing gas or vacuum, in particular a wall outlet. The ball-valve chamber (6) comprises a peripheral wall (20) delimiting an internal compartment (21) containing a movable ball-valve (7), and having a thread (27) formed around this peripheral wall (20) which cooperates with a tapped hole in the central passage (3) forming the internal housing of the outlet body (2). The ball-valve chamber (6) also comprises a first end (6a) with a fluid passage (22) having an internal orifice (24) and an external orifice (23), and a second end (6b) with a wide opening (25).The axial fluid passage (22) is shaped to present a non-circular, in particular polygonal, cross-section on an inlet segment (28) extending from the outer orifice (23) to the inner orifice of the axial fluid passage (24) (22).