abbott laboratories

I was hired by Abbott in Houston in 1980 to design an infusion pump for hospital care. The set used a rubber diaphragm in a plastic housing. The idea was to replace a 3 cent fitting with a $2 fitting and give the pump away so that Abbott would make lots of money from the sets. They wanted to charge $16 a set instead of $3. They sell lots of sets.

I designed the mechanism, a stepper motor driven cam mechanism that also contained an encoder, an air bubble sensor, a door lock mechanism, and two arms that squeezed the tubes to act as in and out valves. They looked like duck bills, so the pump became known as the quacker pump, which was not appreciated by marketing.

I also decided to design the housing, clamp and electronics packaging much to the annoyance of the industrial designer at corporate in Chicago. Again my balsa wood skills were used and you can see the concept model here.

picture to come