Floor Cleaning Drain Hose Improvements
Designing a floor cleaning machine drain hose can be as simple as grabbing an off-the-shelf tube and plugging it into your design, but there are better options available at the same price point. A custom designed tube with features that are tailored to your machine and your customer’s needs are an easy way to make your product stand out from the pack. Here are some key features to consider when designing a custom drain hose:
- Flexibility: How tight of a bend do you want the part to make and how easily that hose takes a bend.
- Stretch: Does the part need to stretch for proper function or would stretching make it easier to store?
- Material: Make sure it resists cleaning chemicals, UV, ozone, and abrasion. These hoses are going to get beat up, and material will help them last.
- Crush resistance: Odds are that the hose is going to get run over and stepped on repeatedly during its useful life. Some hoses will deform or break when crushed, and some are completely crush-proof.
- Cap design: There are a few cap options on the market. One that is durable, light weight, inexpensive, and leak proof are all features that matter. Consider one with a pill-bottle-like positive locking effect that ensures that the cap is tight and prevents accidental removal. There’s nothing worse than spilling slurry all over a clean floor, and a bad cap can allow that to happen.
Some critical components in floor cleaning machines are never seen or appreciated by the end users. It’s the things like the handlebar comfort, the ease of feature adjustments, how well it handles, the smoothness of the wheels, and the function and durability of a drain hose that really determine whether the unit is popular or not. That drain hose is something that is easy to get just right for the end user and that really fits the machine, and it doesn’t take much more effort than a stock tube does during the design process. In fact, a custom floor cleaning drain hose could save design time and cost by conforming to the overall design plan, rather than the other way around, and at no additional part cost.
