A safer way to remove, contain and dispose of used blades without injury rates of two hand removal techniques involving fingers or forceps.

Sharps Containers

From a Customer idea and sketch Wickham Plastics designed and developed this project which included selection and testing of alternative materials (such as ABS, filled and un-filled Nylon, Acrylic, PP and Acetyl), prototyping, extensive die trials, tool modifications, ultra sonic welding, assembly and labelling.

Key features of the new container include:

• An optimised "rocker blade" remover incorporating a unique metal anvil for superior wear resistance;
• A complex "finger & ratchet" mechanism to automatically count the number of blades removed;
• A highly engineered "control gate and hook" system that shuts-off to prevent the insertion of additional handles once a pre-set volume of blades has been stripped.
• Sharps container is secured by a reusable mounting bracket so that you do not have to hold or brace the container when in use.
• Sharps container ensures optimal safety based on speed and convenience for the end user, ergonomic simplicity, passive, automatic and single handed safety principles.

The project was successfully completed in a condensed 12 months time frame in order to meet domestic and export deliveries.

Wickham Plastics proudly achieved the;

"Winner of the Australian (Engineering) Design Award for the Sharps Container Scalpel Blade Remover."

Syringes – Retract Syringe, designed and developed the product function together with reliable, efficient production manufacture, of an injection moulded plastic retractable safety syringe from a customer’s concept sketch only.

Syringes – Retract Syringe

Significant innovation resulted in a patented product that after a single use, the inner barrel and needle retract inside the main barrel of the syringe and are securely locked in place, thus preventing needle stick injury and re-use of the syringe.

Key technical challenges that were overcome in the prototyping stage included:

• Unique limit catch design preventing premature retraction of the needle during the pre-fill stroke;
• The engagement of moulded flexible fingers on the barrel that upon the injection stroke, reverses the one-way lock mechanism to allow needle retraction at the same time preventing forward needle movement.

The technology developed by Wickham has been successfully applied across all sizes (ml) of syringes.