Over lockdown, when I was doing at least two Lateral Flow Tests a week, I designed a holder station that could be 3D Printed quickly and easily without supports.
I iterated the design over the course of a few weeks, and ended up making a second version for my school's medical centre. My school printed batches of them for use in the mass-testing program that was set up for all the students and staff.
After giving many of them as Christmas gifts, I received great feedback from my friends, family and teachers; and decided to start mass-producing them and selling them for a vaccination charity. In 2021 I contacted a few print-farms and recycled filament manufacturers to try and set up a manufacturing process, but had to pause the project for GCSEs.
Sadly, I never finished the project, as people soon started to relax from the pandemic's restrictions and stop testing. Even though I never reached the end goal, it was a great learning experience in iterative design, business model management, and manufacturing setup which I will look back on fondly.
The test holder has 6 main features. It has a column with slots for the sample tube, swab packet and a used swab; a slot for the buffer solution vial; a slot for the test cartridge; and a section to put a small pad of sticky notes, on which you could write the time the test was taken and the person the test belongs to.
The holder came in two main variations, one for home testing kits and one for the mass-testing kits that my school used. Each of the variations ended up having multiple versions, as the NHS switched their provider of testing cartridges multiple times.
The Home Version
The Test Centre Version