Ventana Medical Systems asked the team to design a small-scale in-line curing oven for use in histological glass slide storage preparation. The oven heats a glass/polymer protective layer that after curing creates an airtight bond between the shielding glass and the specimen slide. The specimen is tissue being tested for cancer cells. When heated in the curing oven, the polymer layer on the slide changes from a solvent state to a pure polymer state, in which the slide, tissue, and the coverslip become hardened together, facilitating handling, microscopy, and archiving. The design allows the slide, cover glass, and tissue specimen to enter the oven along with the solvent-state polymer, which heats up to the necessary curing temperature within one minute. The slide then exits the oven and the polymer cures upon cooling. The oven is designed to sponsor specifications and can be adjusted for a variety of fit and form factors, and cures slides continuously as they are fed into the system rather than curing several at the same time.

Ventana Medical Systems asked the team to design and fabricate a slide-retention apparatus able to pick up a standard microscope slide with 1.2 milliliters of liquid and transport it to a designated location while retaining 90 percent of the liquid and finishing the cycle within one minute. Additionally, the device must be easy to operate and be an appropriate size to place on a standard lab bench. The device is designed to operate after a laboratory technician places the slide within the system and presses a button. Once the command is received, the system moves to an initial position, verifies slide placement via a photoelectric sensor, lifts the slide using a vacuum subassembly, and transports it to the designated location. The system then releases the slide and verifies successful delivery. The designed system can move with four degrees of freedom: 24 inches horizontally, 15 inches vertically, 10 inches in depth, and 180 degrees around the vertical axis. System liquid retention was verified by repeated analysis of the system cycle as determined by difference in initial and final slide weight.

The objective of the project is to automate the measuring and cutting of medical tubing. The team designed a machine that accurately and precisely cuts tubing of various materials and diameters quicker than the current manual method. The machine accepts orders for tubes via barcode scanning or manually from a PC user interface. The ultimate goal of the project is to provide Ventana Medical Systems with a machine to automate its current manual tubing manipulation process that can be implemented on the manufacturing floor.

The rapid cycle amine system developed by NASA to remove excess humidity from space suits makes the air in the suits uncomfortably dry for astronauts, so the project sponsor asked the team to design a space suit humidity-control system. The team used Paragon’s Nafion bundle technology to control space suit humidity levels. Nafion is a copolymer of tetrafluoroethylene that is semipermeable to water. The design team designed a mathematical model of the system, including various orientations of the Nafion bundles, and determined the best bundle configuration. The team built and tested a prototype in the Paragon lab, which includes a test bed that simulates normal breathing, the Nafion bundle chamber, and a replica of the current rapid cycle amine system.

Raytheon, the project sponsor, wants to know if augmented reality could be used in its assembly operations, so it asked the design team to test and analyze the DAQRI augmented reality helmet, a wearable human-machine interface that allows users to interact intuitively with their surroundings. The team enabled the helmet to overlay the wearer’s view with animated work instructions on how to assemble a 3U CubeSat model. The team designed a CubeSat and created printed assembly instructions, which were then converted to augmented reality instructions viewable in the helmet. After validating the helmet’s capabilities, the overlaid instructions were tested by having two groups assemble the model, one using the helmet, the other working from printed instructions. For both groups, the team recorded average time taken to build the model and the average number of errors.

Quell is a wearable transcutaneous electrical nerve-stimulation device used to treat chronic pain. A number of studies have shown that in addition to treating chronic pain, nerve stimulation can also be used to alleviate muscle spasticity affecting people with upper motor neuron disorders such as stroke, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury, and traumatic brain injury. The goal of this project is to develop an Android application to control a Quell device to reduce spasticity. The app allows the user to adjust settings such as intensity of nerve stimulation, time of therapy session, and various notification settings for ease of use. The ultimate objective is to enable full flexibility and control of the Quell device through the Android application and to improve the at-home treatment options available to spasticity patients.

This project required the team to design and machine the tooling needed to produce a silicon nitride turbine blade in a high-temperature direct current sintering furnace. Following an in-depth study of furnace capabilities, the team designed a turbine blade made of an insulating aerospace material, grade M silicon nitride produced by H.C. Stark. Blade geometry design was based on computational simulation.

The project’s objective is to develop a chest strap mounted device that detects heart rate, then transmits data via Wi-Fi to the cloud and displays it on a smartphone. The team developed an app that receives analytical data from the cloud and allows the user to see heart rate, exertion level, and heart rate variability. Users can view previous workouts on the app and compare them to their most recent workout, as well as viewing multiple users’ signals simultaneously. This would make the app ideal for an athletic coach, who could monitor an entire team, both on the scene and remotely, and study all team members simultaneously.

The goal of this project is to develop a system for converting a liquid-based suspension of biospecies into a bioaerosol that is driven at a controlled flow rate and concentration into a microfluidic device for lung-on-a-chip applications. The concept of lung-on-a-chip involves the co-culture of human endothelial and epithelial cells on either side of a porous membrane separating two microchannels stacked on top of each other. An air-liquid interface can be established by driving airflow through the epithelial microchannel while maintaining media flow through the endothelial microchannel. The result is a device that mimics the function of the respiratory zone bronchioles of the human lung. The lung-on-a-chip device can then be used to test the effects of various external stimuli, such as drugs and toxins, to mimic the response of a human lung. The team developed a method to generate and drive viable bioaerosols through lung-on-a-chip devices in a controlled manner, allowing quantitative characterization of the bioaerosol flow. Ultimately, these biomimetic microfluidic devices can be used to replace the standard cell monolayers and animal models in clinical and basic research.

The team was asked to design, build, and test a small-scale version of a proposed wastewater-reuse system for the Shamrock Foods facility in Phoenix, Arizona. Shamrock wants to reuse the 500,000 gallons of water per day it currently discharges into the city’s wastewater system. The team created a process that uses a membrane bioreactor, reverse-osmosis system, and ultraviolet disinfection step. Shamrock Foods wants to recycle this water, treated to EPA guidelines, back into its various production processes.