Micro Molding Living Tissue Structures
01/28/15 Micro molding uses a set of fabrication techniques to produce tiny components or extremely small features on larger plastic products. These components have high tolerances with extremely accurate dimensions. Digital journal released an article this month about micro molding living tissue structures which is an amazing concept.
Here is an overview of that article:
There is a new method for constructing large tissues from living components of three-dimensional micro tissues. The hope is to expand on this method to one day build entire organs. These three-dimensional tissues contain thousands to millions of living cells. The cells keep the tissue alive by introducing nutrients and expeling toxic substances.
Using micro molding techniques researchers have been able to build tissue stuctures in sphere, rod, slab and ring shapes. This process takes place in a device with two chambers. One chamber stores the living cellular parts while the other is for construction. In a honeycomb slab structure built, it holds 250,000 cells and is approximately 2 millimeters thick. This is a tiny structure containing large volume of cells. Various cells have been used in this study including ovarian cells, liver cells and breast cancer cells. It is hoped that this method will enable larger structures to be made leading to the production of entire organs such as livers, kidneys or pancreases.
As you can see, micro manufacturing is cutting edge technology that has enabled the medical and pharmaceutical fields to make leaps and bounds in the advancement of technology. We are proud to be at the top of the list of companies involved in this process!
High tech micro features to fight counterfeit drugs
1/12/15 Counterfeit drugs, which generally contain wrong doses and can be toxic, are believed to kill more than 700,000 people per year. This is a huge problem in the developing world where as much as a third of the available medicine is fake.
Researchers at U-M and in South Korea have been working on a way to make labels that change when you breathe on them revealing a hidden image. This method requires sophisticated equipment that makes a template of tiny features, 500 times smaller than a width of hair. This template makes labels that are printed in large rolls and costs about $1 per square inch. On the labels are tiny pillars which hide images written on the material beneath. The hidden image appears when the pillars trap moisture. All you have to do is breathe on the label and an image appears.
These nanopillars stick to plastics, fabric, paper and metal and the arrays are thought to be transferable easily to glass and leather. With this flexibility, this concept can be used on just about anything to enable people to tell the difference between genuine and counterfeit products. Something as simple as breathing on a product can help save lives!
Micro – top 5 unique advances countdown for 2014
1/6/15 In the vast hemisphere of manufacturers left in the industry, there are a select few that can truly call themselves micro manufacturers and even less that can call themselves micro solution providers. Micro subcontractors may have prototype capabilities but not high volume production capacity. They may micro machine metals but not thermoplastic. They may be good at 2d geometry but cannot handle 3d components. They may make components but cannot deal with assembly. They may service the medical device industry but choose not to manufacture implantables. They may do any portion of a program, but do not wish to handle coatings, wires, assemblies, validation. You get the idea, right? There are very few that can pull all the pieces together with multiple processing and multiple material capabilities and assemble these dust specked particles with ultra precision into a micro assembly or micro device like Micro Engineering Solutions can.
But in this ever-changing world that we live in, more and more products are including MICRO components and it’s not just in the medical field. Here are a few interesting ideas that are topping the headlines and changing our world these days:
1. Physicists at Harvard and Univ of IL Urbana-Champaign have created lithium-ion batteries the size of a grain of salt. These are printed out form a 3D printer that sprays conductive inks onto a glass substrate with gold wires. Imagine being able to print your own batteries in the future!
2. TheKube media player makes an iPod Nano look huge! The circuit board is the size of a fingernail and it has a 6hr battery life. Micro-Amazing!
3. Most of todays electronic devices have dozens to hundreds of tiny capacitors that store and release electrical energy. Engineers at Japan’s Murata Mfg company has created a tiny capacitor that measures .005 x .005 x .01”, which is smaller than a pollen grain. This capacitor takes up less space, is lighter and consumes less power.
4. Scientists at the German Center for Free-Electron Laser Science have created a magnetic storage unit that occupies 4×16 nanometers on a disc. Each of its tooth-like structures is composed of 12 iron atoms and the whole structure uses 96 atoms to store a whole byte!
5. The Univ of Michigan has been making tiny computers for years. Their latest project is a self contained computing device that is 1 cubic millimeter wide! This nano-computer is about the size of a pinhead and contains 2 processors, a camera, a pressure sensor and a wireless transmitter and antenna. It has been designed to be implanted in the eyes of glaucoma patients to measure and transmit their ocular pressure every 15 minutes.