Customer
Our client is a medical device manufacturer, specialising among other things in the manufacture of respiratory assistance equipment used in hospitals, essential in the treatment of respiratory illnesses such as Covid-19.
Manufactured product
Respiratory assistance devices
Respiratory assistance devices meet stringent safety standards and are subject to numerous checks on the production line. The qualification of each respirator is validated by a thorough final inspection.
Objective
These artificial respirators are made up of several components that control the flow, pressure and oxygen level sent to the patient.
Our customer's objective is to integrate, upstream of the assembly of the flow control sub-assemblies on the final product, validation checks on these sub-assemblies. The aim is to detect any non-conformity as early as possible in the manufacturing process, without waiting for the final product to be checked.
Problematic issues
Our first problem is to build 2 independent benches, for testing 2 relatively different components, but our customer wants these two benches to be built on an identical basis, with different equipment options and identical control software.
We also have strong space constraints, which means that we have to imagine a small test area.
The testing of these products, their clamping and connection to the bench must be automated.
The test must be carried out with a high level of traceability for all the measurement and control points.
Solution and result
The proposed equipment is a set of two test benches equipped with more or less options and a test board specific to each product.
To overcome the problem of space constraints, each bench is designed in two distinct parts:
- 1 small test area, placed on a workbench
- 1 electric and pneumatic control system offset close to the bench (identical for both machines).
The components of the medical devices are tested for air tightness, flow measurement and verification of all their functions.
The software, developed in-house, allows the editing of test programmes, the visualisation of measurements and graphs and the saving of results. These results are stored in an SQL database that integrates seamlessly into our customer's product data management system.
Safety is ensured by a set of systems, such as a polycarbonate cover protecting against splashes, an emergency stop cutting off the air supply and stopping the test in progress.
IHM
Human-computer interface
