Blood analyzer teardown part 1

[mikeselectricstuff]

[jaxbird]

Interesting  , I have spent quite some time writing interfaces for these kind of machines (and many other kinds of odd hospital equipment, mostly radiology), usually they communicate via the HL7 protocol, querying patient information and submitting lab reports once the analysis is completed.

[electr_peter]

That machine has an insatiable appetite for blood - be careful, Mike. How much blood has it already drawn from you?

I am impressed by the amount of mechanical gear and piping in the machine. It is really densely packed in that enclosure unlike some other machines with mostly empty space.

[firewalker]

Are those machines safe to use without spacial precautions (gloves, face mask)?

Alexander.

[iampoor]

After seeing everything in that machine, the price almost looks low. 

[Towger]

It would appear most of the plumbing is for the various reagents and for cleaning between tests. Still, it may be wise to use gloves when working on it.

[mikeselectricstuff]

All the piping on the main unit is very clean - it flushes after every cycle. Th emess is where things have leaked.
 

[mikeselectricstuff]

Meanwhile in China, at 1/100th the price...

[AndreasF]

What a beautiful piece of engineering!

[SeanB]

Meanwhile in China, at 1/100th the price...

Turn on the captioning and turn on the translation.  It bears almost no resemblance to the video at all. The phrases such as "Mom role working capital" and such are disturbing to say the least.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Interesting video. Mike, do you buy these things for some project or are you just interested in doing a tear down? Or maybe YouTube pays for it...

Just for the fun of it - for big stuff, it usually breaks even after selling bits and scrap metal - the lead from the baggage x-ray paid for it, and other bits covered the van rental.
At 10-20k views on avarage it's not worth bothering with YT monetisation.
I've not done Patreon as I don't want to feel under any pressure to do stuff - have considered kickstarter if I fond something really interesting and expensive...
   

[max_torque]

When you see the number of steppers, slides, grippers, actuators, spiny things (<< technical term!) and whatnot in that machine, you just know that they wrecked a whole lot of them during their coding/control development..........  ;-)

[Mashpriborintorg]

And here is a video showing similar blood analyzers being assembled, factory is in southern France



Looks like one of the sensor systems use a pipe small enough to let the blood cells travel across it one by one !

[free_electron]

Horiba ... my first instinct when i saw this machine was 'fancy bread maker' ...

i think horiba also makes those and rice-cookers as well.


i only hope that there is no news article next week that reads something along the lines of
'British electronics hobbyist infected by every blood bourne pathogen known to man ...'

with the stuff that has leaked in there ...

[PA0PBZ]

And here is a video showing similar blood analyzers being assembled, factory is in southern France

Got to love the way they pronounce "horrible medical" 

[mikeselectricstuff]

Part 2

[artag]

Maybe they designed the case / did the press release before the internal design was completed .. and then had to squeeze the bits in to match the sales pitch.

[dexters_lab]

nice video Mike

shame the laser was missing! where you expecting it to be there or did you know it was missing before you bought it?

[alho]

71 valves would make a decent sized waterfall display.

[SeanB]

Enough mechanical parts there to make at least 4 3d printers, and I wonder if you could use the rotary turntable and a simple XZ movement ( and a lot of conversion from Cartesian to radial planes in the software) to make a 3D printer optimised for circular objects.

Pumps are nice, and the drain system is both simple and likely to not block easily, though looking at the assorted coloured stains and spills inside there has been a lot of oops moments in use, or during maintenance. Would hate to think of the price of the "kit, maintenance, first line" and to the contents, likely it comes in a 10kg box almost as big as the unit. would only be things like the wipe film, ribbon for printer ( at 3 lines per slide it will do thousands and that Citizen printer mech is run at low duty), piping to filters and then filters and such.

Printer will be easy to do self test, take the connector that leads to the main board ( not RS232) and you will find that there is a common, a line feed pin, a on off line pin and then it monitors the busy/online and error light outputs. Hold down line feed ( or short the lot to common) and power it up and after 5 seconds let the lot open, it will print a self test pattern or dip switch setting, depending on firmware version.

[mikeselectricstuff]

nice video Mike

shame the laser was missing! where you expecting it to be there or did you know it was missing before you bought it?

I didn't know,  though I assumed the external PSU was missing.
No big deal as I've had a couple of similar Argon lasers in the past.
The optical bench would have been nice though.

[firewalker]

Maybe the missing parts are still around to the place you bought it.

Alexander.

[PA0PBZ]

I really don't understand the purging assembly, it's just not ok to have it leak down the sides of the pistons.
There should be a hole in the middle and a simple valve, not like this where it leaks all over the place.

[mikeselectricstuff]

If anyone fancies one or two unite themselves - just spotted that  same seller has another two!
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2x-Horiba-ABX-Pentra-120-Medical-Chemistry-Hematology-Blood-Analyzer-Units-/400861217398?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item5d5530c276

[mikeselectricstuff]

I really don't understand the purging assembly, it's just not ok to have it leak down the sides of the pistons.
There should be a hole in the middle and a simple valve, not like this where it leaks all over the place.

I don't think it's supposed to leak during normal operation