There is one thing that unites all contact lens wearers: none of us remember the last time we changed our contacts. This is quite a bad thing, as overusing contacts can lead to eye infections and corneal scratching. Underuse wastes lenses that are expensive and difficult to fabricate.
My team of 3 other industrial design students and I identified this issue as grounds for a potential product, and then set out to develop it. Beginning with concepts ranging from hydraulic pumps to miniaturized bird feeders, we converged on a design for a life-limiting contact case that met our requirements: effective lens life limiting, sanitary operation, and a lower plastic consumption than the current array of bottles and cases we all carry around.
The final design is a disposable contact case made of 2 blow molded sheets. Rather than buying fluid, cases and lenses all separately, users of our product would buy their lenses and fluid prepackaged in a single case. Fluid is dispensed from the case reservoir into the lens storage wells with a quick press of the reservoir's flexible top. After 14 days of use the reservoir is empty, forcing the user to open up a new case with new lenses and fluid. Though throwing out cases every 2 weeks seems wasteful, it is more than offset by eliminating the waste from separate contact packages, cases and fluid bottles. A user of our design consumes around 20% less polymer mass than a conventional contact lens user.
I led the design and manufacturing aspects of the project, and successfully demonstrated that a functioning case could be made using vacuum forming as a low-volume analogue for polymer blow molding, We produced a run of around 15 cases before our 3D printed molds deformed beyond usability. Some of the steps of our manufacturing process can be seen in the images below.
Thanks to my awesome teammates Christy, Lizzie and Annette for being the best team I could ask for!