• Question: What is the best thing you have made in your company so far???

    Asked by jnr engineer 5891 to Tom, Sanjeev, Orla, Fiona, Eimear, Cillian on 2 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Orla McGee

      Orla McGee answered on 2 Mar 2020:

      Recently I 3D printed a metal stent (a device used to open arteries that are struggling to let blood flow through them) that is quite flexible. Usually, 3D parts are quite stiff so I was very proud when we managed to make a new flexible design.

    • Photo: Fiona Malone

      Fiona Malone answered on 2 Mar 2020:

      The last robot I had to build had to mimic a human oesophagus (food tube) and the swallowing motion called peristalsis. The human oesophagus works by squeezing the food to the stomach, kind of like squeezing toothpaste from a tube of toothpaste. This was a very difficult motion to replicate and to make the materials move in the way a human oesophagus does. But it was lots of fun and worked out great! The company I designed this for are using the robot to test out stents used for people who cannot swallow properly.

    • Photo: Cillian Thompson

      Cillian Thompson answered on 2 Mar 2020:

      The best thing for me so far was 3D printing a screw that could be drilled into bone (sounds disgusting but sometimes a patient needs this if their bone is badly broken). I was also able to 3D print the humerous bone (the bone that goes from your shoulder to elbow) to get an idea of its shape so I could try to make the screw better but I still have a lot to figure out!

    • Photo: Tom Hodgkinson

      Tom Hodgkinson answered on 3 Mar 2020:

      A lab I worked in developed a stem cell treatment that was able to heal the leg bone of a dog that was run over by a car. The dog would have had to have the leg removed but for our treatment. It was a great feeling to see the Eva the dog running around and happy.

    • Photo: Eimear O'Hara

      Eimear O'Hara answered on 3 Mar 2020:

      I 3D printed my first shoulder out of metal recently – it took a long time to get to that point so I was delighted when I could actually see my design in real life!

    • Photo: Sanjeev Kumar

      Sanjeev Kumar answered on 8 Mar 2020:

      Recently, I developed a wristwatch-integrated antenna that was successfully implemented for wireless monitoring of patient’s health parameters (such as blood sugar or oxygen level, body temperature, blood pressure and heart rate) at Mercy hospital, Cork, Ireland.

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