by Devin Pellicone, Industrial Products Engineer
Medical devices, like most devices these days, are becoming increasingly more digital. Just like the phone in your pocket or the computer on your desk, medical instrument companies are trying to find new ways to get more oomph out of their devices while making them smaller and less invasive. Achieving higher performance in a medical device in not usually a medical problem. It’s a thermal one!
As device manufacturers increase the performance and functionality of their devices, they inevitably wind up
with more heat to get rid of. Even under normal operating conditions efficiently removing heat from electronics is not a trivial task. Now add the complications of an antiseptic operating room or the confines of the human body and you’ve got quite a challenge.
ACT has developed numerous cooling solutions for medical device manufacturers that incorporate passive two-phase heat transfer products. Often the heat generating component in a medical device is buried inside of the instrument which may be operating inside of the human body during surgery or touching the skin for medical scanning. As you could imagine you wouldn’t want that device to get too hot for the surgeon to handle effectively (that’s a dangerous game of ‘Hot Potato’) nor would you want the potential for the device to cause harm to parts on the patient’s body that it may come in contact with.
The solution is to move the heat from the location where it cannot be dissipated to one where it can. ACT has accomplished this on numerous products with our heat pipe technology which provides a very low resistance thermal path for heat to travel to a location where it can be safely and effectively removed. ACT has incorporated this technology in products ranging from mammography and MRI machines to various surgical equipment.
If you are interested in learning more about thermal solutions for medical devices, check out our free eBook: