Gtech to make public design details of a medical ventilator, manufactured in a matter of days

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Nicky Godding

Worcester home appliance design and manufacturing company Gtech is making public design details of a medical ventilator which could be manufactured in a matter of days to help in the fight against COVID-19.

A video of the ventilator working has been presented to government and the NHS. Further video drawings and parts will be disclosed on the company’s website tomorrow.

Nick Grey, Owner of Gtech began working on the project after being contacted by Gareth Rhys Williams, Government Chief Commercial Officer in the early hours of Sunday morning.

“At first I thought it was a hoax – being asked if I could assist in making up to 30,000 medical ventilators in as little as two weeks” said Nick, “When I realised that this was a genuine need I felt compelled to help”.

Nick spent Sunday learning how ventilators worked and on Monday tasked Gtech’s engineering and model making team to tackle the challenge. He also bought a ventilator off eBay and arranged for it to be collected first thing Monday morning.

There were quite a lot of problems; oxygen is a very reactive gas, which rules out many motors and electrical devices. Normal air operated cylinders can only run on air, not pure oxygen so they could not be used.

The breakthrough was to repurpose an everyday syringe into an oxygen-powered ram. A valve directs oxygen into the syringe which squeezes a self-inflating air container delivering 400ml of air directly to the patients’ lungs. A second syringe acts as a timer and once the ‘breath’ has been delivered resets the ram ready for the next cycle.

In order to save and conserve oxygen, the waste gas is fed into a reservoir to enrich the patients’ air supply.

The ventilator is driven and controlled entirely from the hospital oxygen supply without the need for electricity.

The number of cycles per minute, volume of air delivered, and the pressure of the air can all be controlled according to patient’s needs.

“We designed the ventilator entirely from parts that can readily be made from stock materials or bought off-the-shelf. This means that if government approves and wants Gtech ventilators they can be made by almost any engineering and manufacturing company” says Nick “Gtech could produce around 100 per day within a week or two providing we could find steel fabrication and CNC machining companies to help us make some of the parts”.

Gtech plan to produce two more ventilators and submit them to government for assessment.

Gtech, based in Worcester specialise in making cordless vacuum cleaners and garden power tools.

Nicky Godding

Nicky Godding is editor of The Business Magazine. Before her journalism career, she worked mainly in public relations moving into writing when she was invited to launch Retail Watch, a publication covering retail and real estate across Europe. After some years of constant travelling, she tucked away her passport and concentrated on business writing, co-founding a successful regional business magazine. She has interviewed some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs who have built multi-million-pound businesses and reported on many science and technology firsts. She reports on the region’s thriving business economy from start-ups, family businesses and multi-million-pound corporations, to the professionals that support their growth and the institutions that educate the next generation of business leaders.