The team traveled to Naples last week and met with the Arthrex team! During this visit, the team had the opportunity to present the PDR for the project, observe a cadaver lab using one of Arthrex’s devices, and walk through their R&D Lab. The labs were the highlight of the team’s experience as we got to see a true visual of how Arthrex aims to provide minimally invasive surgical care and how a physician would use those devices. Through the cadaver lab, in particular, the team was able to speak with one of the physicians to understand what they struggle with, what they would like to see included or improved, and any areas of risk that they believe we should keep in mind whilst designing our own device.

Currently, we are looking forward to prototype inspection day (PID) that will be November 12^th. The mechanical team is working on 3D modeling new concepts for the tubing attachments and will send these models to print for testing within the next week. The testing will include using the peristaltic pump and water with the 3D models to simulate how they will perform with the final saline pump. The electrical team has a GitHub platform setup to begin coding the flowrate of the saline control system.

This week, Saline Sync not only had parts arrive to begin prototyping their model, but we are also traveling to Naples, FL to visit the Arthrex site!  

The team received the peristaltic pump and tubing required to test ideas for their proof of concept and understand how to control different components that are bought for the prototype. With the peristaltic pump, the team discovered that the motor has a higher “cold start” current and requires a higher current to start itself. After it has the current needed to start, it can draw normal amount of the current. We also discovered that we need a motor shield as the motor may need PWM to adjust its RPM. Yiwei taught members how to solder wires to the peristaltic pump in the IPPD lab, improving the team’s overall technical skillsets so we have multiple members ready to hop in and assist with the building of the prototype.  

The team is currently on their way to Naples, FL to meet with Arthrex to present our PDR tomorrow! We plan on practicing and making final adjustments tonight at the hotel. Arthrex also plans to give us a tour of the facility and host lab sessions with the team to give us a better understanding of how their products work! 

The team presented our PDR presentation to our peers for practice and feedback before we presented it to Arthrex in Naples next week! One of the members, Maya, unfortunately caught Covid over the weekend, and had to present with the team virtually. Despite this setback, the team was able to gain valuable critiques to their presentation that will elevate their public speaking skills and display of information within the slides. The team learned that we need to slow down our pace and face our audience more whilst presenting to ensure the audience follows along and is engaged with us.

With Hurricane Milton’s arrival in Florida, the team had to cancel meetings with their coach and liaisons. However, our plans to visit the Arthrex site are still set to be on Wednesday, October 16th, where the team plans to present the PDR and observe the current pump systems that Arthrex has in the market.

Saline Sync is officially IPPD Lab trained! Due to the hurricane causing school-related events to be rescheduled, the team had to split into 2 groups to find common meeting times to get lab trained. With this lab training, the team can now start building and testing concept ideas and prototype within the laboratory space. The lab space also includes monitors for the team to practice presentations on a larger screen, and a 3D printer for teams to print parts and prototypes.

The team also got to learn how to generate ideas using the brain walking method in class! Dr. Elif Akçalı taught the class how to generate creative ideas at a quick pace by adding all ideas that come to mind without worry of being ridiculed for any single idea. Through the brain walking activity, the team came up with more ideas as to how the project will look and how different components will be built to fit with one another. With this idea generation technique, the team will be able to formulate more ideas and ways to expand each idea out more quickly and effectively.

With Hurricane Helene approaching later today, we are uploading this post a little earlier just to make sure we don’t miss out this week! This past week, the team got to split up members into sub-teams to allow members to focus on their own parts of the project related to their specialties and interests. Here are the sub-teams, members, and percentage of time each member will spend in each sub-team, and areas of focus:

Electrical and Software Sub-team

• Heon, 85% – GUI, PCB design, microcontroller, and software concepts
• Yiwei, 85% – Circuitry design, PCB design, Micro-controller programming, GUI
• Frank, 30% – Controls, circuitry
• Daniel, 30% – Anything
• Paul, 20% –  Circuit design, some software programing
• Maya, 15% – Assisting in flow rate calculations within the code
• Andriana, 15% – Assisting with any code and circuitry, any PID control

Mechanical Sub-team

• Maya, 85% – fluids, controls, prototyping, CAD/3D printing, and manufacturing if needed
• Andriana, 85% – fluids, controls, prototyping, CAD modeling, 3D printing, etc.
• Paul, 80% –  flow rate sensor, CAD, 3D printing
• Daniel, 70% – CAD and prototyping
• Frank, 70% – concepts, controls, and prototyping
• Heon, 15% – Learning CAD and 3D printing
• Yiwei, 15% – Learning CAD and 3D printing

Our sub-teams have decided on weekly times to meet outside of the full team meeting times and plan to start meeting next week to discuss sub-team specific needs and items. During full team meetings, sub-teams will give updates of their progress and indicate areas that require the collaboration of both teams.

With career showcase week this week, the team was able to meet with Elizabeth Wildsmith in-person! The team went to the Arthrex info session together to meet our liaison engineer after getting word that she came to UF. Through the info session, the team got to know more about the background of Arthrex, their products, and their career opportunities.

The team was also able to meet our coach, Dr. Philip Jackson, in-person this week! We were able to have our coach meeting in-person at the IPPD meeting rooms to go over the PDS and PDR progress, design concepts, and go over any questions we had so far in the design process. With Dr. Jackson back on campus, we will continue to have coach meetings in-person.

Last week, we got to meet with our liaison engineers, Troy and Elizabeth! During this meeting, we also got approval for the name and logo for our team (see below)!

The name ‘Saline Sync’ represents the goal of our project to provide precision saline delivery. Within the logo, the gear and syringes represent the combination of the engineering and medical fields into one project. The syringes create an ‘X’ to represent the ‘X’ in Arthrex, who is our sponsor.

From our meeting with Troy and Elizabeth, we gathered enough information to begin brainstorming our own ideas of what our project will look like. Our team decided to create our own individual designs and to come together to discuss our ideas. We ended up with three rough sketches of the general overview of the product, the electrical components, and the mechanical components. Though this is a great start, we have learned that there are still more questions that need to be answered by our liaisons before we move forward with these designs. In the meantime, we will be researching how proposed mechanisms for the project work!

To start off the beginning of the week, we booked one of the IPPD meeting rooms Sunday and got to work figuring out our team’s layout! Though some of us had some trouble with accessing the building at first, we all made it through the doors after teaching one another how to use our mobile IDs to unlock the doors to the building.

During our meeting, we discussed what roles we’ll each take up and what roles we wanted to rotate between members. After much discussion, it was decided that the team leader would rotate between Paul and Daniel as they both wanted to get more team leadership experience. As a team, we went over our agenda and questions for our first meeting with the liaison engineers of Arthrex, Troy Garrison and Elizabeth Wildsmith.

On Tuesday, September 3^rd, team assignments were announced in class along with the details for our projects. As we introduced ourselves to one another, we learned that we are a group of a wide range of talent and skills that will be instrumental to the development and success of the project. During class, we looked over the Scope of Work to learn about what our project will entail, and the requirements needed to be successful.

We also got to meet our coach, Dr. Philip Jackson, who took the IPPD class during his undergraduate years as well! With Dr. Jackson, we shared backgrounds and interests, so we could get oriented on the strengths and skills of our team. After going over the logistics and expectations of our team, we delve into the details of our project and possible designs for us to explore.

The picture below shows our team which consists of:

• Yiwei Bian, Computer Engineering​
• Andriana Detsis, Mechanical Engineering
• Maya Dunn, Mechanical Engineering
• Heon Heo, Computer Engineering
• Paul McKenzie, Biomedical Engineering
• Daniel Rivera, Biomedical Engineering
• Frank Vigoa, Mechanical Engineering
• Dr. Philip Jackson, Coach