Medica 2011

It’s that time of year again, on November 16-19 MiniFAB will be in Düsseldorf for the annual Medica conference. This is one of the leading medical trade fairs globally and covers topics including medical technology, diagnostics, electromedicine, laboratory equipment and drugs. The conference attracts people from healthcare industries across the globe. At MiniFAB we look forward to this event each year.

Come and visit us at our Booth (Hall 2, Stand C06), where will have an exciting display of our unique services and capabilities for polymer micro-engineered solutions. Dr. Andrew Campitelli and John McCormack will be at the Booth and look forward to discussing with you your needs and requirements for the development of your next innovative product.

Let us know if you’re planning on being there too. To find out more about the Medica event, see their website here.

Andrew Campitelli
Manager, Sales and marketing
AndrewCampitelli@MiniFAB.com.au    

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CEO Report

Lab-on-a-Chip World Congress and µTAS, two important meetings in our space, were held back-to-back this year in South San Francisco and Seattle. MiniFAB was pleased to be a sponsor of microTAS and we were on the exhibition floor of both meetings.

The energy and dynamics at microTAS was exciting. In more than 720 presentations (600 posters), researchers described their work in an impressively broad range of fields. Many of the presenters were PhD students bringing an optimistic and enthusiastic edge to work that could indeed have a huge impact on lives if applied to health and life sciences.

There is a genuine feeling that the area of microfluidics is finally “growing up”. Notably there were proportionally fewer presentations on how to design a microfluidic widget and more on chemical, biological or cellular interactions made interesting by use of microfluidics. In other words, we are seeing a trend of microfluidics being used as a tool for research rather than the principle goal itself - although there is still a lot of work to be done in that area too. Hot research areas are in molecular and cellular microfluidic applications, and the research into ultra-low cost paper-based microfluidic devices will be interesting to watch.

A smaller meeting, the Lab-on-a-Chip World Congress has its own interest and focus. The attendees tend to be more industrial. Speakers from universities still give most of the presentations, but more of the talk on the exhibition floor is about real-world issues of bringing these innovations to market: issues such as manufacturing options, regulatory compliance, system costs, intellectual property and the current investment climate.

As can be expected, two key questions start surfacing when the technology reaches this stage of maturity. The first is “How much will my plastic disposable cost?” and the second is “Is it time for the industry to develop design standards?” Although seemingly unrelated, a moment’s thought will tell you that these are intimately linked. Standard designs, tools and processes enable developers to shop around for competitive quotes for fabrication and assembly. However, at present, the best way to reduce cost is still through correct design rather than competitive pressure amongst fabricators. Good design aims to reduce component count with increased integration of function, and this cannot be done independently of an understanding of the final fabrication process. Therein lies considerable opportunity for innovation, and of course, for valuable intellectual property.

At Lab-on-a-Chip World Congress we presented a poster “How feasible is the $1 lab-on-a-chip System” which describes a cost modeling approach that we use extensively with our clients to guide early stage design decisions. You can download the poster from MiniFAB’s web site and of course we are always pleased to discuss your requirements and work with you to apply the model to your design. The output is used to validate other cost estimates, or provide evidence to investors that the product design will meet its cost targets. If you are already in production and looking for a second source of supply, MiniFAB’s cost model approach provides a clearly understood approach to developing a manufacturing quotation.

If you have strong views about the need for industry standardization then this is the right time to engage in the debate. Henne van Heeren has started a ‘Taxonomy and Standards for Microfluidics’ discussion group on LinkedIn. I look forward to seeing your comments.

Erol Harvey
CEO
ErolHarvey@MiniFAB.com.au

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Tolerating miniaturisation for manufacture

Many people will go down the route of miniaturizing for a range of reasons, but getting one device smaller is one thing, but making 1,000,000 units smaller and identical is very challenging. In an engineering sense you can think about it in terms of tolerances and orders of magnitudes.

When making a car you’re dealing in metres, with tolerances on door panels in millimetres, or a ratio of 1,000/1. For good engineering, you’d have a ratio of 10,000/1. To make a reproducible, 100 micron-sized microfluidic device with a ratio of 1/10,000th, you’re quickly down to tolerances of nanometres. Hence the real challenge to miniaturisation is how to control engineering tolerances that are 100 to 1,000 times smaller than the shape you’re making.

TearLab’s™ Osmolarity Test Card collects 50 nanolitres of teardrop and needs a precision of better than 1.5%. As the manufacturer, in order to meet these requirements, MiniFAB needs to hold all the engineering precision involved to better than 1.5% on 50 nanolitres. That translates into nano-scale tolerances on our injection moulding, on our PSA sealing layer, it influences how you hold the card, whether you squeeze it, etc. All of these things impact the size of the tiny channels in the miniaturisation.

Ensuring this precision involves very careful control of the process parameters. Our experiences have shown that central to our capability to maintain these tolerances is the fact that we do everything under the one roof, from the injection moulding to the electrode depositions, through to the final packing. The histories of the materials matter and if you don’t have enough information as to what has happened to the parts, then you’ll never hold the required tolerances.

Erol Harvey
CEO
ErolHarvey@MiniFAB.com.au

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New Laser

This month MiniFAB welcomed a new addition; the PLS6MW multi-wavelength laser platform. The new laser allows our operators to easily change the laser wavelength to process the broadest possible range of materials.

Bas Garst
Manufacturing Manager
BasGarst@MiniFAB.com.au

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