Medical Tantalum Capacitors

AVX Corp., Fountain Inn, SC, has released a series of medical-grade tantalum capacitors for noncritical medical devices. The T4Z Medical Series HRC4000 capacitors are designed to replace commercial capacitors in the filtering, hold-up, and charging circuits of noncritical medical devices that require high-reliability and strict change control. Devices include implantable, non-life-sustaining devices, such as heart monitors; external, life-sustaining devices, such as automated external defibrillators; and external non-life-sustaining devices, including patient monitoring equipment. The capacitors are based on the company's MIL-PRF-55365 product line. Case sizes range from 2.54 × 1.27 × 1.27 mm (L × W × H) ±0.38 mm and 0.016 g to 7.24 × 3.81 × 2.79 mm ±0.38 mm and 0.335 g with solder-plated, solder-fused, gold-plated, or 100 percent tin terminations. They offer capacitance values extending from 0.1 to 330 μF, eight standard voltage ratings spanning 4–50 V, and rated operating temperatures extending from –55° to +125 °C.

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Machinery and production line component production has typically been served with traditional processes such as CNC machining and injection molding. However, as industries strive to find greater efficiencies and add more value for their customers, machinery and production line manufacturers and runners are looking for ways to enhance and optimize how they produce components–in order to offer unique/customized solutions at low cost to their internal or external customers, drive greater production line efficiencies with lightweight, high performance parts, and maximize equipment uptime. 3D printing opens up a world of new opportunities for machinery and production line component production–both for original and spare parts.

Could touch be the new avenue for communications? Researchers from MIT and Purdue University think so and are working on a “general-purpose” tactile system that delivers information using text or speech symbols.

Corporate procurement, or sourcing, is moving away from its traditional focus on transactional unit costs and towards the strategic goal of building strong, effective supply chains that deliver great overall value to an organization at the lowest total cost. This guide to strategic sourcing for the procurement professional in manufacturing will give insight into why this shift is occurring, discuss its potential benefits and the elements necessary for success, and describe what qualities to look for in strategic partners.

A novel method for recycling PLA using low-temperature, low-pressure reactions with alcohol or water has been discovered by Zeus Research. PLA is used today in many applications ranging from food packaging to implantable medical devices. Because of its sensitivity to thermal degradation, PLA is difficult to recycle and actually becomes a contaminant in the plastics stream of municipal solid waste.

Researchers have designed the first neurosurgical robotic system capable of performing bilateral stereotactic neurosurgery inside a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner. The MRI-guided robot facilitates less-invasive stereotactic procedures on the patient under general anesthesia because surgeons can accurately control and evaluate the stereotactic manipulation bilaterally to the left and right brain targets in real time. This innovative technological breakthrough can facilitate the treatment of Parkinson’s disease and other neuropsychiatric disorders.

DBS therapy, like a heart pacemaker, can deliver electrical signals through implanted electrodes to the deep brain targets. It helps to restore normal nerve cell activity. Conventional DBS is performed while the patient is awake under local anesthesia. Surgeons have to rely on verbal or physical interactions with the patients to ensure the electrode placement is going well. This surgery demands accuracy in order to target only the tiny nucleus structures and not damage the surrounding critical tissue. Without the intra-operative updates of a surgical “roadmap,” the brain may shift after the skull is opened, which inevitably lowers the targeting accuracy.

Researchers have created an automated blood drawing and testing device that provides rapid results, potentially improving the workflow in hospitals and other health-related institutions to allow healthcare practitioners to spend more time treating patients.

“This device represents the holy grail in blood testing technology,” says Martin L. Yarmush, senior author of the study and Paul & Mary Monroe Endowed Chair & Distinguished Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Rutgers University–New Brunswick. “Integrating miniaturized robotic and microfluidic (lab-on-a-chip) systems, this technology combines the breadth and accuracy of traditional blood drawing and laboratory testing with the speed and convenience of point-of-care testing.”

NxStage is a publicly traded multinational medical device corporation headed by CEO and Founder Jeffrey Burbank. Jeffrey started NxStage from scratch with the goal of revolutionizing the treatment and care of patients requiring kidney dialysis, and for the last 20 years his company has developed unique and innovative products to meet patient needs and improve quality of life. Learn more about Jeffrey’s rise to the top and hear from a lineup of successful entrepreneurs that have advanced the medtech industry on June 25th at the MedInnovation Boston Conference: www.medinnovationevent.com

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Early detection has been shown to increase breast cancer survival rates, but many women avoid having their mammograms taken as often as they should because of the discomfort involved. Researchers say they have developed something better: a laser-sonic scanner that can find tumors in as little as 15 seconds by shining pulses of light into the breast. The scanning system, known as photoacoustic computed tomography, or PACT, was developed in the lab of Lihong Wang, Caltech’s Bren Professor of Medical Engineering and Electrical Engineering.

PACT works by shining a near-infrared laser pulse into the breast tissue. The laser light diffuses through the breast and is absorbed by oxygen-carrying hemoglobin molecules in the patient's red blood cells, causing the molecules to vibrate ultrasonically. Those vibrations travel through the tissue and are picked up by an array of 512 tiny ultrasonic sensors around the skin of the breast. The data from those sensors are used to assemble an image of the breast's internal structures in a process that is similar to ultrasound imaging, though much more precise. PACT can provide a clear view of structures as small as a quarter of a millimeter at a depth of 4 centimeters. Mammograms cannot provide soft-tissue contrast with the level of detail in PACT images, Wang says.

ICU Medical, Inc., which makes medical devices used in infusion therapy and critical care applications, has become the first medical device manufacturer to obtain certification under the UL Cybersecurity Assurance Program (UL CAP), a new cybersecurity management program from UL designed to minimize risks by creating standardized, testable criteria for assessing software vulnerabilities and weaknesses to help reduce exploitation, address known malware, enhance security controls, and expand security awareness.