KELSEY FORKER
Wet-Dry Cleaner Nozzle Development
Shark HydroVac
My most recent co-op was at SharkNinja working in Shark R&D. The majority of my time was spent supporting the launch of a new wet-dry cleaner, HydroVac, before transitioning to work on the second generation of this product. The HydroVac contains clean and dirty water tanks. Water is continuously supplied to a spinning microfiber brushroll. Water is then picked up off the floor and brought to the dirty water tank via suction and mechanical squeegeeing of the brushroll.
Problem Statement
While working on the second generation of HydroVac I was tasked with modifying the nozzle of the first generation HydroVac to solve a key problem area without losing any of its current performance. This key problem area is currently not addressed in any competitor products and would provide significant market value if implemented successfully.
HydroVac Nozzle
Actions
The problem I was attempting to solve had already been solved on traditional Shark vacuums. This led me to isolating the corresponding technology from a Shark vacuum and hacking it into a HydroVac nozzle with some machining, 3D printing, and lot of hot glue. This technology was successful in solving the problem, but significantly decreased performance on another important test. I performed root cause analysis to determine the failure mechanism of this technology. I then looked into adding additional geometries that could be added to the nozzle in order to maintain success in solving this issue while mitigating the failure mechanism this technology caused. I led multiple brainstorming meetings to come up with ideas for these additional geometries as well as other potential solutions. I cataloged all attempts with no success.
This led me to begin modifying the technology used in traditional vacuums. This consisted of lots of design iterations in CAD, 3D printing, and lots more hot glue. I designed a fast test matrix to quickly assess the success of each iteration. I coordinated with our testing team in order to run these tests.
Results
I eventually found an iteration that solved our key issue without losing performance on another key test. I then soldered and machined this nozzle onto the body of our latest second-generation prototype to asses its performance in our entire testing suite. I found that the modifications I made successfully solved the key issue while maintaining the same performance in all other important tests. I then led international design reviews with both our UK and China teams to discuss implementation, manufacturing, and additional improvements. My modified technology was implemented in all subsequent nozzle builds.
Shark HydroVac Microfiber Brushroll
Shark HydroVac