Overview of Project Context
Describe the context of how the MAE156 project fits into the sponsor’s overall research or industry objectives.
Digital imaging hematology analyzers have revolutionized the clinical hematology laboratory services. While digital image recognition depends heavily on the quality of stained blood smears, manually made blood smear slides vary in quality. The automated slide-maker-stainers work pretty well but they are very expensive and usually unaffordable for small clinical labs. To fulfill this unmet need for inexpensive slide-maker-stainers, our team has been requested to come up with a slide-making-and-staining flow line which incorporates Siemens’ Hematek slide stainer.
Project Objectives
High Priority Objectives
Blood Smearing Mechanism
Incorporating the blood smearing mechanism with a widely used staining machine by Hematek
Second Priority Objectives
Drying before staining
Other Constraints and Issues
Slide labeling
Varying blood count may require different smearing angle, speed, and pressure
Reading bar code on each slide
Transport slides from smearing mechanism to the Hematek stainer
Avoid cross-contamination(Clean or Dispose used spreader slides which contacted with blood)
Cost less than $1000, as low as possible
WOW Design Solution
Incorporate shaking and dripping blood mechanism
Penetrating mechanism of the testing tube cap
Connect with Digital imaging hematology analyzers
Print barcode onto the sliders
Risk Reduction Objectives
The design team together with their sponsor should identify the first tasks of the project, to be completed during the last 3 weeks of the 156A quarter. These beginning tasks are meant to address high risks aspects of the project early on. Possible risk reduction tests could be a preliminary hardware test, analytical modeling, or software simulation. Ideally, each team will identify some hardware and some analytical objectives for the risk reduction phase. The goals of these tests are to explore high areas of risk through simple prototypes and/or analysis. A good risk reduction test will ask specific questions and help make important design decisions, such this method will work and this one is unlikely to work. The results of the risk reduction tests will be presented in the MAE156A final period and will be the major graded portion of sponsored projects during MAE156A.
Feasibility of smearing with tape - risks of spilling blood and unaverage blood smearing.
Disposal or cleaning of the spreader(spreader slide or tape).
Different material of tape(smooth vs rough; sticky vs non-sticky) could be tested. Smearing blood with glass slides requires different smearing angle, speed, and pressure due to varying volume of sample.
Connection mechanism: transport the slide from slide smearing to the stainer. Possibly involve rotating the slide from horizontal to vertical to load onto the stainer. Determine the loading accuracy required to seamlessly work with the Siemens Stainer.
Intermediate Milestones
Identifying meaningful intermediate milestones is critical for effective project management. Together with your sponsor identify such milestones, and specify specific performance requirements you aim to meet at each milestone. As the project progresses, these milestones will likely become more specific and their description should be updated.
Decide which approach to smear the blood.
Test the blood smearing mechanism to get acceptable smears on the slides.
Build the connection mechanism to transit slides to the Siemens Stainer.
Individual Component Analysis Topics
The individual component analysis is part of the risk reduction effort. Each student will select a component of the project to investigate. Common topics are the evaluation of a component that the team would likely have to purchase during the project. Other components may be evaluations of different software or analytical methods to use. List component topics below:
Slide making mechanism
Connection mechanism - Transportation
Connection mechanism - Rotation
Material selection for critical components
Fixation/support/tolerance