Custom instrument and microfluidic cartridge for antibiotic susceptibility testing. The major subassemblies in this instrument are Pressure Chamber, Reagent Dispensing, Pneumatics, Heating, and Imaging.
The design work was mostly completed when I joined the project, but the system had poor reliability when building pressure. I redesigned the mechanism that compresses the door gasket and holds the loading tray while the system is pressurized. The new assembly needed to fit into existing systems without modifying the pressure chamber or the primary system PCBA. The redesigned door lock reduced seal failures by 90% and reduced assembly time by 8 man hours per system.
My favorite part of this project is the custom spur gears that i designed for the lock mechanism.
Custom instrument and microfluidic cartridge to test for sepsis. The major subassemblies in this instrument are Cartridge Loading and Clamping, Fluid Dispense, Pneumatics, Heating, and Imaging.
I was heavily involved in all phases of this project from the initial breadboard design thru transfer to manufacturing and finally Design Verification testing. I also designed and built many of the tools used in assembling and testing this device.
My favorite part of this project is the camshaft used to open and close the ten cartridge valves.
I built 4 of these for cartridge development. As you can imagine, running all those cables was a nightmare.
Revising the cable routing and redesigning the electronics reduced the assembly time by 75%.
The first 9 DV units undergoing testing.
The PhenoCycler works in conjunction with existing fluorescent microscopes for synchronized staining and imaging.
The instrument consists of a 3-axis cartesian robot attached to a high accuracy syringe pump with a selector valve. The microscope slide is loaded onto the sample tray which is loaded into the microscope. Bulk reagents and waste are stored outside the primary housing and the low volume reagents are loaded onto the lower platform. The instrument dilutes the reagents, stains the slide, washes the slide, and collects the waste without intervention from the operator.
The most challenging part of this design was getting that acrylic door to rest nicely against the sheet metal enclosure with no obvious seams.
When I started working on this PCR Instrument, it was nearly finished… it just didn’t work how it was designed. I fully dismantled the instrument and performed a root cause analysis and then completely redesigned the interior without making changes to the costly molded housing.
My favorite part of this project is that the excitation and emission filters are embedded directly into a large, GT2 pulley and driven to position with an offset stepper motor with a much smaller pulley. The gear ratio between the smaller pulley and the larger pulley allows the require precision and repeatability needed to align the critical components.
I developed and built two iterations of capital equipment to help my customer dial in their process for manufacturing transdermal micro-needle patches. The operator is able to control dispense rate, wipe speed, CO2 flush, and force on the wipe head. Both instruments operate on a PLC that I programmed.
I also redesigned the wipe head to eliminate a significant amount of dead volume. This redesign saved the customer nearly $8.5MM annually.
My favorite part of this project was programming the PLC for the conveyor belt. It was challenging and outside of the tasks I normally take on.
This 40x microscope has 4 bays for loading slides mounted directly on Peltier Coolers (TECs) which allow thermocycling of the sample while imaging. The TECs and slides are mounted on an XY stage that is suspended from the main objective platform.
At 40x magnification, the optics and slides have to be completely isolated from sources of vibration, so everything is mounted on thick sorbothane standoffs.
The part of this project that I am most proud of is the flatness and planarity of the slide mounting plates. By building up a thick layer of hard anodized (type III), the material can be lapped to a flatness nearing 0.001mm.