Work from a mechanical engineer with diabetes

Hi there everyone,

I’m a new to this forum, new to diabetes as well but Beyond Type 1 has been extremely helpful for me. I was recently diagnosed with Type 1 about 2 months ago at 31 years old, and have been learning to live with the disease daily, treating currently with Multi Daily Injections. As a mechanical engineer whose day job is to manufacture consumer electronics, I have also become very interested in how to improve the day to day challenges of diabetes management, and just what to do with all of the supplies, etc. I have been doing some prototyping for things that have helped me organize, so I thought I would share. Happy to share CAD files for any of the items here, and appreciate your feedback or questions.

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The two things I carry in my jeans pocket on a daily basis

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What the pen needle case looks like inside… a 3D printed carrier wrapped in leather.

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Leather Wrapped, 4 Up and 8 Up Pen Needle Carriers. AirPod case for size comparison. An SLA prototype of the pen needle carrier in the middle. You can see how veg tan leather patinas over time. The 8 up in the back is what the 4 up looked like a month ago.


A water resistant Riley Case for Loopers and multiple design iterations behind it.


What the Riley Link case looks like open… two gasket seal. These gaskets are 3D printed in TPU but next revision will just use off the shelf silicone gaskets. I haven’t come up with a design that has robustly sealed the charging port from water yet, but just got some material to try resin casting a plug which will result in much better dimensional accuracy.

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Nice work! Well thought out and designed accessories make our lives with diabetes just a little easier. No one better to do this than someone with first-hand experience. Will you explore commercial partners when your prototypes are perfected?

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Thanks Paytone! I think if there was demand, I would! Since I am just one person, I have limits to the volume and number of configurations I could make on my own. I have outsourced manufacturing to China before, but that would require more capital up front, so again I’d have to get an understanding of demand first. There are some tradeoffs for the different options. Maybe a kickstarter would be a good way to gauge if people are interested in the future!

Cool beans. Welcome to the club, Ian_D.

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Great stuff and glad to see someone with mechanical engineering skills working on this kind of thing. I’ve always been amazed at how 2nd rate a lot of the incidental stuff around T1 care is. Thinking specifically of the zipper case that comes with ContourNext BG testers. Lousy fit for the tube of strips, which makes the thing hard to zip closed, the stretchy band that covers the activation/enter button on the meter—the whole thing seems like it was repurposed from a case intended for something else. I really love how your pieces are actually fitted to the thing they’re intended to contain.

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As a mechanical engineer, I think you’d really appreciate the V-Go insulin pump. It is completely steampunk- no electronics at all!

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