Non-assembly mechanisms for eye surgery (CLOSED)

Surgical instruments used in eye surgery are very small, which makes it difficult to produce instruments with high functionality. The bottleneck in the production of eye surgical instruments is the assembly step. Assembly has to be done by hand, because of the small size of the parts. Automation is difficult to implement, due to the relatively small number of specific instruments. As a solution to this problem, the complexity offered by 3D printing can be used. A way to do this is to 3D print entire functioning products or mechanism in one single step, without the need of assembling them afterwards, called non-assembly 3D printing.

A vitrectome is a specific instrument used in eye surgery to remove the vitreous from the eye. It consists of two thin, hollow needles that are inserted into the eye, and a handle containing a vibrating mechanism. In this assignment, you will be working on the design of a non-assembly 3D printed vitrectome mechanism, which should have the same specifications as current vitrectomes.

This assignment will be available from January/February 2021. Interested? Contact Kirsten Lussenburg, k.m.lussenburg@tudelft.nl.