I've used F&P's ESON 2 nose mask (medium) for around 10 years. I want to make you aware, if you're not aleady, that this mask is defective in the following way.
- harness-retaining-clips.jpg (13.06 KiB) Viewed 1361 times
I brought this to F&P's attention about 12 months ago. They did nothing which I suppose could be a good cash cow for F&P.
Perhaps it's just me, and I'm not treating the the mask harness clips gently enough. I dug deeper and found that the Manukau Superclinic in NZ, which has an excellent loan service for CPAP machines, has had a number of the ESON2's returned with the same kind of breakages.
I had a corporate-speak email from F&P again about 1 month ago from the sales manager and they say 'they are looking into it'. Yeah, right.
I decided to make a new stronger clip-retaining fitting, initially from brazed copper. It is ugly but it works. All the mask problems went away. Image below.
- An ugly Eson2 modd that works
- eson2-modd.jpg (25.54 KiB) Viewed 1325 times
The prototype is made from copper plumbing offcuts that slip over the "stump" of acrylic (after grinding off the jagged remains of the broken clips) and is firmly held there by a soft plastic splint pushed down between the central copper tube and acrylic stump. Two harness clips are brazed to the tube sides. Repeated heating of copper to soften it helped the bending process to a rough clip shape. After cleaning with isopropyl alcohol to remove skin oils, I sprayed it with 2 coats of black anti-corrosive paint. To remove, gently push the whole thing upwards until splint releases. No glue is necessary.
It works like a charm and, as with many of my projects, I learned as I walked the walk. Next time around I would use flux-core silver solder and wire-wrap the 2 clips to the tube with copper wire, BEFORE soldering and bending the clips downward. Holding the clips on the tube while brazing was the most awkward part. Wire wrapping would relieve you of being supernaturally steady-handed
