Industry/University Cooperative Projects Center
| Agilent | COBE Cardiovascular | Ford Motor Company | Lockheed-Martin |
| Ball Aerospace | Coors | IBM | Micro Motion |
| Ball Packaging | CTD | ICAST | Nastic Actuator Development |
| Boeing | CONMED | Intel | Sikorsky |
CONMED
Conmed is a ‘high tech’ medical instruments company located in Denver. They have developed an ABC Technology that is a unique adaptation of electrosurgical(use of radio frequency energy) coagulation. This technology focuses radio frequency energy along the direction of a beam of argon gas. The electro-surgical current follows this beam directly to the tissue to be coagulated.
Argon Beam Coagulator (ABC) Accessories Free Space Pressure Distribution Automated Measurement System
One of ConMed electrosurgery’s products is a special type of coagulation system which uses a combination of RF energy and room temperature argon gas to produce a uniform spray coagulation effect. This beam or plasma has a number of beneficial clinical effects including producing a stronger more flexible eschar, reduced tissue damage and better hemostasis than conventional spray coagulation.
In developing these products, it is important to characterize the flow dynamics of the argon electrode nozzle since this affects beam performance, tissue effect and the potential to cause gas embolization. The objective of this project is to develop an automated approach and data acquisition system to measure the free space pressure distribution at various distances away from the nozzle tip.
This will be used as a research tool to correlate changes in nozzle design with changes in beam performance and tissue effect. ConMed expects to use this system to measure the performance of existing as well as new ABC accessories. These accessories range from handheld pencils to very thin catheters.