Manufacturing Automation - Medical Component Assembly System

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MANUFACTURING AUTOMATION

Medical Component Assembly System

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Background

Advent Design’s client developed a new medical diagnostic instrument which included a disposable reagent vessel preloaded with buffer solutions and stir bars. Our customer required an automated assembly system to produce the consumable vessel at a rate of 30 pieces per minute.

System Description

Medical Component Assembly System

Advent designed, built, and installed two manufacturing systems for the consumable component of a new medical diagnostic instrument. The first-generation machine produced a single cavity vessel for the initial instrument release. The second-generation machine was capable of producing both the first generation and second generation vessels, the latter being a four-cavity vessel. The transport mechanism for the vessels was a multi-vessel based pallet with a pneumatic walking mechanism which indexed the pallet vessel to vessel. This allowed an accumulation of 1000+ vessels in a drying oven for an upstream process.

Pallets of 20 vessels were fed into the system.

A stir bar was cut and deposited into the first cavity. The stir bar station was capable of producing a stir bar as short as .20”.
Two cavities were sealed with a heat activated foil cover.
Two cavities were filled with a buffer solution. IVEC dispensers were used for liquid handling.
Foil seals were diecut and thermally sealed over the last two cavities.
A sequentially bar coded label was applied to the top lip of the vessel.
Barcode label presence was verified, and barcode sequence validated.
Individual vessels were ejected from the pallet, onto an exit conveyor.
Rejects remained in the pallet for operator removal.
Vessels passed through a metal detector to detect the presence of the stir bar. Rejects were removed from the belt.
The stream of good parts were then counted, and directed into a pouching machine.
A pouching machine was included with the system and packaged 25 vessels to a pouch.

Medical Component Assembly System

Impact

The challenge with the first generation machine was a very tight implementation schedule. The machine was designed, built, and acceptance tested in 16 weeks. With the lessons learned from the first machine, Advent increased the throughput of the second-generation machine from 30 to 45 vessels per minute.