Overview

Rural communities in Canada, notably the Indigenous ones, lack access to adequate healthcare professionals due to the issue of proximity. Project 2 aimed to automate the process of surgical tool sterilization so it could be performed in the absence of a specialist. In order to do this, our team had to achieve the following objectives:

• Designing a program to control a robotic arm to transport tools to the appropriate autoclaves
• Designing a sterilization container to hold our assigned tool

The Plan

<aside> 🔧 The Big Task: As part of the modelling team, I was tasked with collaboratively planning and designing the sterilization container. In order to do this, we had to consider size and weight constraints, sterilization effectiveness, ease of use, among other ideas.

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<aside> 🩺 The Plan: Minimizing the area of the container to fit the surgical tools in, and maximizing the amount of holes through which sterile fluids can enter. Additionally, using a lid to open and close the container in the simplest way possible.

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Our team’s assigned autoclave footprint

Our team’s assigned surgical tool

P2 Progress Tracker

Applicable Skills

Soft Skills

✅ Teamwork and cooperation

✅ Time management

✅ Organization and planning

✅ Oral communication

Technical Skills

✅ CAD in Autodesk Inventor

✅ Creating engineering drawings

✅ 3-D printing

✅ Report writing

✅ GRANTA

Design Process

Individually and as a member of the modelling sub-team, I aided the creation of our final sterilization container holder. The first step in this process was prototyping some designs to get started.

Prototypes

Final Design

<aside> ⚙️ Skills showcased: CAD and team communication. It allowed me to draw ideas from different sources to create a working container model. Another skill was using GRANTA to select materials, as well as performing thorough research on them to create a strong container.

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<aside> 📈 Reflection: While all the milestones in this project were completed on time, a lot of it was rushed. A skill to continue working on for me is time management. Taking on several leadership roles within my sub-team, I learned the importance of communication and worked to keep it consistent between teammates. I improved a lot on CAD skills during this project’s duration, and aim to keep working on them.

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Additional Resources

On the following page, I have attached additional attachments and project-related documentation for reference: