What is MEPTEC? Its the Microelectronics Packaging and Test Engineering Council that serves semiconductor suppliers and manufacturers. As manufacturing technologies continue to innovate to meet the demands for microfabrication, more integration is needed among the various components. ALine is presenting in the “MEMS Technologies for the Medical Industry” on our modular rapid prototyping and volume manufacturing platform for microfluidic circuits. Brad Fox, our sales director will talk about our latest work in demonstrating the reliability of on-board pumps made us using our polymer laminate platform. You can read more in our technical articles section.
MEPTEC Presentation September 27th, 2011
September 23rd, 2011ADEPT – ALine Development Platform
September 23rd, 2011
This is an excellent tool for developing fluid circuits with on-board pumps and valves. The ADEPT platform was also developed for optimizing assay protocols by programming the sequence of valves. Designed to permit real-time inspection and videography of your fluid circuit using a custom x-y stage and video camera. Eliminates the need for complex connections to the card. All air connections via o-ring. Fluid can be delivered through a number of options: on-board reservoir, peristaltic pump, or pneumatically.
Bridging the Divide between Rapid Prototyping and Volume Production
August 22nd, 2011On August 31st, I will be presenting a talk at the COMS/MANCEF conference (http://www.mancef.org/coms2011). I will be discussing the transition from early prototyping with 10 to 50 parts in a batch, to low volumes with hundreds to thousands of parts in a batch. The key is for the client and the manufacturer to work together to develop appropriate in process quality control, 100% QC inspection by both parties to verify quality before using the part, and to expect some design changes to be required to reduce the scrap rate and improve device to device performance. Another critical consideration is to evaluate the robustness of the microfluidic cartridge and instrument interface to reduce device to device performance variability.
America’s Competitive Edge
August 22nd, 2011The Future Manufacturing Conference, held August 8 -10th in Napa Valley (www.mfg2011.org) was sponsored by the Transducer Research Foundation, and organized by Prof. Marty Schmidt, from MIT and Prof. Tom Kenney, from Stanford University. A sobering presentation on America’s competitiveness was given by Dr. Greg Tassey, from the economic analysis office at NIST, which suggested that America’s long-standing lack of an economic policy to ensure new innovations mature to commercialization has lead to a decline in our competitiveness in manufacturing. The so-called ‘valley of death’, in which the new innovations die for lack of funding before becoming commercially viable, has exacerbated the decline in new US-based manufacturing infrastructure. Combine that with economic policies by foreign governments that encourage US companies to invest in overseas manufacturing, and we find a dearth of new jobs in the near term that will be generated by growth in manufacturing. The remedy? As you might guess, it is a complex and multifaceted issue that involves government investment to bridge the valley of death, as well as changes in our education system to train more workers for the manufacturing sector. Companies, too, need incentives to invest in America. I believe that companies like ALine represent the future of new manufacturing capability. By innovating the use of well-known tools for rapid prototyping and low volume manufacturing , we are pioneering new manufacturing infrastructure. Our emphasis on low to mid-volume manufacturing with a flexible, readily customized process, represents the kind of manufacturing infrastructure that will create new competitive capabilities in a market that has yet to mature. In keeping with a pioneering spirit, the ability to do more with less, and a can-do attitude, our emphasis has been to use easy-to-scale tools to create highly functional microfluidic devices.
Modularity for Customized Fluidics and Instrumentation
June 10th, 2011By using modular designs for complex microfluidic functions, we support rapid demonstration of proof of concept. Beyond proof of concept, we also design for volume production. By fall 2011 we’ll be ISO 9000:2008 certified.
Visit our poster on June 14th at NSTI in Boston, MA from 1-4PM. poster #507
Poster presentation, NSTI, Boston, June 14th, #507
June 10th, 2011Visit our poster to discuss how our process can support your immuno- or molecular diagnostic application. We’ll have prototypes on hand that demonstrate our modular and scalable fabrication process.
Visit ALine at MEDICA
November 13th, 2010To learn more about our capabilities and our success, please visit us at MEDICA Dusseldorf, DE,
November 17-19th, Booth M41, Hall 8a. Click here for more information.
Laminate Construction Used for Prototyping
November 8th, 20103-D printing of an electric car, the Urbee: This CNN report highlights an example of laminate construction used for prototyping but also foreseen as a process that can be scaled for volume manufacturing. Imagine this process on the micro-scale, and you have something very similar to what ALine does!
ALine Presenting at the 2010 Molecular Diagnostics World Congress, October 28th-29th
October 28th, 2010Catch ALine’s President, Dr. Leanna Levine, speaking about advances in the rapid prototyping of microfluidics at the Molecular Diagnostics World Congress in San Diego on October 28th at 9am.
For more info go to www.selectbiosciences.com/conferences/mdwc2010/
Understanding and developing a critical path is the key to success
March 15th, 2010Your research made the intellectual property possible and provides the scientific foundation for the product. Yet most of the approaches used in research need to be reassessed for manufacturing considerations when moving into product development.
While research requires openness to discovery and setting aside the requirement for a specific outcome, product engineering is about using the best available current knowledge and designing methods to ensure the system behaves the same way time after time.
Product engineering requires consideration up front of ways to cut costs in manufacture.
For many start-up companies, resources to fund an engineer with the right mix of skills is difficult. Finding a development partner is more cost effective and can produce a better outcome by approaching someone with experience with a number of products. The advantage is they will know what materials meet typical requirements, they likely have “been there, done that”. It’s to your benefit to leverage their experience; it could save time and money.
Before determining how to execute a sample to answer strategy, understand what the likely manufacturing options are up front. Discuss what the price point is for the manufactured product for the first two to three years when volumes will be substantially less than the market potential that is envisioned. Discuss the price point for the instrument that supports the fluidic. This will help the fluidics designers and the instrument designers to work together to balance the cost to performance of the fluidic disposable and the instrument.
While a dollar a piece for the disposable is the ideal price point, it is unrealistic when the cost of tooling cannot be amortized over large volumes.
A good prototyping company will offer a variety of options to evaluate initial designs and suggest which technology will give the best initial results.
What do you need to accomplish with the fluidic device? Discuss the application with your prototyping partner. They should be able to help you design to get good performance without a lot of wasted time in designs that take you down the wrong path.
What kinds of parts tolerances can be expected for different prototyping methods? To keep the cost of the fluidic component low, aim to design with tolerances of +/- .005” (125 microns), and use channel widths no less than 250 microns to permit standard tooling and assembly methods.
