Jigsaw piece vacuum pickup tool
A simple vacuum tool for lifting jigsaw pieces lying flat on a surface, for a lady with rheumatoid arthritis in her fingers.
The Challenge
Our client really enjoys jigsaws, but was having difficulty picking up small pieces – especially off flat surfaces – as she has reduced dexterity due to rheumatoid arthritis, and needed a solution to help. The client’s OT had found a possible solution posted up on the net on a maker site (hackerday.com) which was made from an aquarium air pump and wondered if REMAP could create something along similar lines.
Our first step was to see if our client could manage one of the manual/cheap suction tools sold for less than a fiver on sites such as ebay and used to lift surface mount electronic devices (SMDs) into place during circuit board assembly, but the manual press-button action required some finger pressure, so wasn’t particularly suitable for long periods of use. There also tended to be very slight loss of suction when used on the underside of jigsaw pieces (as opposed to the smooth printed side), and it was felt that a constant vacuum would give a more reliable result.
The next commercial option considered was a battery operated SMD vacuum tool (e.g. Duratool D03311 at around £20 or the RS Pro badged identical product 222-2160 at around £30) but it was felt these might go through batteries fairly quickly being powered by a single AAA, the loud buzzling noise at the point of use might be irritating, might be too fiddly for our client to use, and the device has no flexibility to have a finger control that suited our client. We also found a USB rechargeable variant of this sort of tool at £80, and it is also possible to get commercial mains powered vacuum tools for SMD circuit board assembly too, but they tend to be expensive and overkill for this sort of requirement.
A video is included Duratool 1 showing the Duratool D03311 being used to pick up a piece of card representing a jigsaw piece so there is no doubt this solution works, and might be acceptable for some people, so it is definitely worth considering before embarking on a REMAP project. However, a period of thorough testing also revealed that it could intermittently suffer periods of refusing to pick up for several seconds, and would then recover by itself – suggesting the quality isn’t all that great. This can be seen in the second video Duratool 2 where the motor noise can be heard to change indicating the suction cup is correctly placed, but it refused to pick up for several attempts.
The solution
We set about creating a similar solution to the one the OT had found – by taking an aquarium air pump and using the suction of the intake to feed a pickup tool. The pump we sourced was a very popular and widely available mains pump – the HDOM HD-602 at around £13, this having a single output, a potentially useful variable air flow control to suit different jigsaw piece sizes, and was pretty quiet when running. These simple pumps work by electro magnetic induction and are intended to run all the time, so would be able to cope with a bit of vacuum use. We also sourced an extra long section of aquarium pump tubing so, if the slight hum from the pump became annoying, it could be plugged in several feet away from where it was needed.
The pump outer casing was removed, and the air intake located, this being a tiny hole in the pump unit, which we drilled out and tapped to M6 thread to allow removal of any plastic swarf and a hollow plastic pin which we found was moulded below the hole and broke away when drilled.
A small screw-in pipe was machined from the engineering plastic Acetal* which takes the pump input to the pump outer casing where the silicone aquarium air tube could then be attached.
The manual/cheap SMD suction tool we had bought to test with was dismantled for its tiny rubber cups and for the curved air pipe which was a tight push-fit onto that tool. A custom hand tool was machined from Acetal, with a thumb hole on the side to raise and drop the suction, and therefore the jigsaw piece. The area around the hole was dished slightly to give a good thumb seal. All joints were thread-sealed to prevent loss of suction.
A “P clip” and machined Acetal* bolt tapped into the side of the pump casing secured the air hose to prevent any kinking as it is very soft and flexible. Ditto, a spring strain relief was added to the suction tool for the same reason.
*Note that the pump unit we used is double insulated (i.e. no earth) so it would be unacceptable to have used metal for these two components, in case there was some sort of internal fault such as a wire coming loose.
The benefit
The solution proved to be very effective in use. The largest 10mm suction cup could easily lift large jigsaw pieces (say around 40mm x 40mm) on maximum pump suction without any difficulty. The middle 7mm suction cup was suitable for the smallest of jigsaw pieces as typically used in the puzzles our client was attempting, and could be run on reduced suction and noise. Our client was delighted with the result.
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