InstaSwab
TM
Nasal Swab For COVID19 Rapid Respond
Year
2020-2021
My Role
Senior Computational Designer | Product Lead @OPT Industries
FMEA, DFM, Original Product Design, Research, Computational Design, Process Development, Production Operation
In the first weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, the US supply of nasopharyngeal swabs collapsed. InstaSwab was OPT's response: a medical-grade nasal swab whose absorbent tip is not flocked or moulded, but a computationally generated micro-mesh — printed directly, in one piece, on OPT's roll-to-roll photolithography system.
From shortage to first working prototype took 48 hours; from prototype to pilot production took three months; from pilot to 800,000+ units took the year that followed.
2 Days to the first Tip
60 Days to Production
The first prototype shipped to a clinical contact 48 hours after the project began. The tip geometry — a continuous lattice of micrometre-scale filaments, sized to wick and release viral transport medium — was generated parametrically rather than drawn. Variable cell size and shape along the tip let absorbency and release be tuned independently, without any post-process flocking step. Gallery: prototype iterations, raw print, first clinical samples.
The production line consist of 5 production machine created from scratch to manufacture the product with the first 60 days.
for 3DP NP Swab Design
Production line ready
First design send
for evaluation
800k units sold
0 hour
48 hours
60 days
1 year
Meta-Material
The swab is a single continuous print, but its geometry is zoned. At the tip, an open micro-lattice woven with finer fibrous filaments captures mucus and epithelial cells with the mechanical entrapment a flocked head provides — but because the void fraction and cell size are designed rather than stochastic, the same sample elutes back into transport medium with little retention loss.
In a bench study against a Copan FLOQSwab and a polyester reference, InstaSwab recovered 63% of the input DNA on average, versus 36% and 14% respectively; at 10⁴ copies/mL — where both reference swabs failed to amplify at all — the InstaSwab still eluted over 50%, extending the assay's limit of detection by roughly an order of magnitude. Down the shaft, the geometry stiffens into a helical double-lattice, giving the rod torsional rigidity for rotation against the nasopharyngeal wall while keeping the wall thin and the part light. A compliant disc between tip and shaft forms a designed breakpoint that snaps cleanly into the transport tube.
One material, one print, four jobs — collection, retention, controlled fracture, torsional response — each handled by the architecture of the part rather than by adhesive joints between dissimilar components.
