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Medical Designers Save Time, Parts with Software
Fewer prototypes--sometimes almost none--speed development
By Design News Staff -- Design News, October 25, 2004
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| Multi-Use: Engineers used Solid Edge to design a table surgeons could use for patient exams, surgery, and recovery. |
"Faster, cheaper, better" is a phrase that may have its genesis in the aerospace industry, but it has launched breakthrough designs in other industries as well. Case in point: the medical industry, where device manufacturers have used CAD and FEA to give flight to new design ideas while slashing product-development time.
Two recent examples, one in the U.S. and one in the U.K., show the improvements and time/cost savings engineers have realized from their use of engineering software.
In Camberly, U.K., the design team at reseller Williams Medical Supplies set up a new technical development department to design medical products and settled on Solid Edge (UGS) as its core design tool. "Our aim is to take a routine surgical instrument and bring something new to the design that will provide significant benefit," says Robert Steele, technical development director. Among their projects: the Opmaster Series 4 surgery operating table. The enhanced design allows a patient to be examined, operated on, and recover on the same table.
Collaboration
Using Solid Edge, the team modeled parts and ran collision and interference analyses and motion simulation. "We were able to sit with sales and marketing during the initial design stage and get feedback," Steele says. "Engineers don't always get it right, but with the software we could rehearse the design and minimize the risk of getting it wrong."
The result was a major time savings, largely the result of not doing many prototypes. "In fact, we were almost able to dispense with the prototyping phase and go straight to manufacturing," Steele asserts.
Working with different software and on a vastly different product line, engineers at San Diego-based Tensys Medical Inc. had similar results.
Using SolidWorks for CAD and COSMOSWorks for FEA (both from Dassault Systemes Inc.) the engineering team developed the T-Line® Tensymeter, a non-invasive arterial blood-pressure management system for use in surgery. Their goal was to replace the traditional cuff-based monitors that provide only intermittent measurements every few minutes. That kind of irregular monitoring can delay recognition of rapid changes in blood pressure.
The design concept uses an actuator to move a sensor over the patient's wrist to find the best position for producing a continuous waveform. The sensor has to float within a rigid frame attached to a serpentine arm that's designed to flex. The team used COSMOSWORKS to identify areas of high stress for the olefin-based serpentine arm and used the analysis results to make design modifications.
Among those modifications, says Senior Engineer Russ Hempstead: "We removed the stress risers, added radii, and added thickening sections." The team cut parts by putting more functionality in each part.
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