Collaboration between Project MESA and Washtenaw Community College’s Advanced Fabrication Program
In addition to improving the design’s comfort, durability, and clinical features, they have been working to simplify manufacturing of their product.
Amanda Scheffler and one of her students welding Project MESA’s fifth prototype of their portable gynecological examination table in December 2016.
M-HEAL’s Project MESA has been finalizing its design of a portable gynecological examination table for use in rural mobile clinics in Nicaragua. In addition to improving the design’s comfort, durability, and clinical features, they have been working to simplify manufacturing of their product. The group connected with Amanda Scheffler, a welding instructor at Washtenaw Community College (WCC). She donated her time to weld the team’s fifth iteration of their prototype, and after hearing their mission to reduce cervical cancer morbidity in low-resource settings, she wanted her students to get involved. She teaches the Advanced Fabrication course at WCC, and she wanted her students to have the chance to apply their manufacturing skills from the classroom in a meaningful way. Her students have been designing and building three welding fixtures for Project MESA’s portable table, which can be used for quicker and simpler assembly of the devices. This partnership has provided both the WCC and UM students with the unique opportunity for cross-collaboration between engineers and manufacturers, with both groups learning from each other while working on a project geared towards improving global healthcare. In the future, they hope to continue this relationship in optimizing the manufacturing of the tables so that more of MESA’s devices can reach their target communities.
From: Erik Thomas (erikmich@umich.edu), M-HEAL, Project MESA Lead.
Image: Amanda Scheffler and one of her students welding Project MESA’s fifth prototype of their portable gynecological examination table in December 2016.