Background
Trucorp Ltd design and manufacture a wide range of medical training manikins and simulators.
One training area where manikins are used is the intubation procedure where a laryngoscope is used to guide an endotracheal tube (ETT) into the mouth, voicebox then trachea to keep the airway open so that air can get into the lungs.
Manikins used for this procedure are available in both adult, infant and child sizes. To satisfactorily perform this procedure, the head must be placed and held in the correct position and the mouth opened. The actions of opening and closing the mouth puts stresses and strains on the silicon based material used for its construction. This repeated action is leading to failure of the material.
Trucorp approached AMIC for assistance on the design and manufacture of a Manikin Testing Machine.
CHALLENGE
The challenge centred on robustly holding the manikin head in the correct position while the laryngeal scope opened and closed the mouth, putting stresses and strains on the corners of the mouth.
The machine also had to be capable of accepting the range of dimensional sizes associated with an Adult, Infant or Child Manikin.
INNOVATION
The machine incorporated a number of innovative adjustable feature including base clamping, head clamping, laryngeal scope positioning, laryngeal scope dynamic movements and test repetitions.
RESULT
A fully adjustable bench-mounted Testing Machine for adult, child and infant training manikins.
IMPACT
The machine will allow Trucorp to complete durability tests on their materials, identify limitations and optimise material specifications to maximise the service life of their products.
Alan Mills, Senior Project Engineer
Alan Edgar, Senior Electronics Engineer
Andrew Schofield, Senior Manufacturing Engineer