The pandemic Ventilator, designed by Michigan Technological Universitie's Innovative Global Solutions Enterprise, was made to assist those in developing countries. There was a previous version, but after some research, a new team came in and updated this ventilator to make it more lightweight, cheap, and pleasing to the eye. Three unique subgroups were needed in order to complete this project. The Packaging team had the main goal of redesigning the packaging that held the components of the ventilator. The Code and Controls team which redesigned the SIMV and worked on trying to create a bigger data display. Finally, the O2 team worked on maintaining the flow of oxygen while the ventilator was operating.
Understanding the market[edit | edit source]
Ventilators can cost upwards of $40,000 while remaining extremely heavy and hard to lift.
Project goals[edit | edit source]
The goals of this project was to reduce the cost of a ventilator, make it more lightweight and easy to store, and implement these ventilators in developing countries. The idea was that there would be a good amount of these ventilators stored in a safe space, and if there was any pandemic, the hospital would be able to pull these ventilators out and use them as need be.
Design[edit | edit source]
The design process started with hours of NX work. As seen in the reference below, the far left picture shows the finished NX model. The packaging for the updated ventilator was made with polycarbonate. This material was cheap and allowed the ventilator to be lightweight. The assembly of the box was done by the IGS Packaging team(excluding the cutting and drilling of the polycarbonate, which was done at a MTU machine shop), and a handle was attached to the ceiling of the package allowing for the ventilator to be carried with one hand.
Look at the below reference to see images of the first pandemic ventilator(far right) and the remodeled ventilator(left).