Prototyping Labs

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Spine of the Electrical lab

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Electronic Prototyping Lab

Electrical Lab

The electronic prototyping lab houses the necessary equipment and resources for building and testing circuits, workstations for basic programming and 3D CAD design, and more.

Tools & Equipment:

Welder | Soldering Station | Heat Gun | Components | Kits | Adhesives, Applicators & Curing Station | Computer Workstations | Hot Wire Foam Cutter | Oscilloscopes | Function/Signal Generators | Multimeters | Power Supplies | Digital UV AB Light Meter | Sewing Machine | Sensor Signal Conditioner | Hand Tools

Earl E. Bakken Medical Devices Center Safety Training must be completed and on file with the Bakken MDC Lab Supervisor before use of the facilities and equipment will be granted.

Experimental Prototyping Lab

Experimental Lab

The Experimental Prototyping Wet Labs for working with animal and human tissues/fluids. Each have work benches and fume hoods with chemical storage that is rated for handling most flammables (various solvents) and corrosives (various acids and bases). Storage of gas cylinders (for example, oxygen and argon) is also allowed, however this allowance may vary depending on the exact type of gaseous material.

Tools & Equipment:

Barnstedt Thermodyne Furnace | Mettler AE 100 Balance| Luxo Triple-beam balance| VWR S75 Digital Hot Plate Stirer | Sartorius SCA0006 Balance | Ohause Triple Beam Balance | AE Adam Balance | Techne TC-8D Temperature Controller | Blak-Ray UVL-56 | Test Tubes | Round Bottoms | Beakers | Volumnetric Flasks | Surgical Tools | Air Hoods (three) | UV Light Meter | UVCure Plus | Digital Pressure Gauges | Sage Syringe Pump | EFO Syringe Pump | Vetroson/Macon Electrosurgical Unit | Kratos Temperature Controller | Digital Calipers | Extech Force Gauge | Hydrometers | Hydracell | Stainless Steel Containers | Pipettes | Test Tubes | Dessicator (two) | Oven | Freezer (two) | Refrigerator | SRS Clean Station | AO Spenser Microscope | Gast Compressor | Store Light Source for microscope | Techne TC-8D Temperature Controller | Jebao Peristaltic Pump | Tuning Forks | OceanOptics Spectrometer | LIS 8430 Xenon Light Source | Sensormatic | Labline Pyro-Magnestir | Motic Microscope | Schott Light for microscope | Scican Sterilizer | AE Adam Moisture Analyzer | Glass Thermometers | Fisher Mark III Flowmeter | Sierra Smart-Track Flowmeter | Hitachi Video Camera | Valley Lab Surgistat | Bunsen Burner | Ultrasound Generator RM2060 | EFD Pressure Chamber | Mettler Toledo AX26 | VB-302A | VWR Auto-Pipettes

Earl E. Bakken Medical Devices Center Safety Training must be completed and on file with the Bakken MDC Lab Supervisor before use of the facilities and equipment will be granted.

Mechanical Prototyping Lab

Mechanical Lab

Mechanical prototyping lab houses many precise measurement tools for quality controls.

Tools & Equipment:

  • Shop-vac, eye-wash, shower, sink, first aid kit, fire extinguisher, hearing protection, face shields, safety glasses, gloves, etc
  • Scrap materials available for prototyping use
  • Tape measure, level, safety glasses, brushes, various tapes, various glues, MarkRite letter & number punches (¼ inch), crowbar, protractors, knives, scrapers, tube bender, screwdrivers, nutdrivers, calipers, micrometers, gage blocks, force gage, thread gages, hole gages, feeler gages
  • Allen wrenches, standard wrenches, metric wrenches, sockets, taps and dies, drill bits, files, hammers, mallets, saws, clamps, pliers, cutters, punches, chisels, and more.
  • Clamps, table vice, press, timer, temperature probe, pressure gauge, calibrated masses, force guage, dial thickness guage, hand drill, power mixer, machining lubricant, dremel, and bench top work area

Earl E. Bakken Medical Devices Center Safety Training must be completed and on file with the Bakken MDC Lab Supervisor before use of the facilities and equipment will be granted.

Virtual Prototyping Lab

Dane Coffey using the VR Coffey Table

Named for Dane Coffey, the Computer Science PhD student who wrote the software for the system, the virtual reality and simulation project has continued to progress over the past year. A product of Dan Keefe’s Interactive Visualization Lab and Art Erdman’s Bakken Medical Device Center, this project is entering into a new phase. The preliminary grad student’s on the project have graduated and with two years of NIH funding remaining, the group is looking to enhance the usability and effectiveness of this collaborative and powerful design tool. New team members have already made their presence felt by reducing the memory usage of the software by 90%.

Along with a core team from the University, this project has also benefited from collaborations with outside companies and universities. The team recently ended a successful partnership with Boston Scientific Corporation that pushed the project forward. The University of Illinois, Chicago, has also been an important ally and over the past few months, a new collaboration has developed with Medtronic, Inc.

While talks continue at the University concerning the potential of this technology to be the foundation of a start-up company, the Bakken MDC continues to generate interest in the Coffey Table by highlighting the system on most tours. More recently, with the help of the Visible Heart Lab, the system was brought to the annual Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) conference in Washington DC, where it grabbed a lot of surgeons’ attention.

The virtual reality table and projector should not be used without consent from the Bakken MDC's lab supervisor.