From breadboard to spectrometer. (computing).

In order to capture a share of the hybrid mass spectrometer market, MDS Scientific of Concord, Ontario, recently was faced with the need to bring to market a commercial spectrometer in a little over one year.

The spectrometer would combine time-of-flight technology with conventional quadrupole designs. This would result in a new design gaining favor among chemists because it widened the range of compounds that laboratories could analyze and identify, allowing them to even distinguish differences among DNA molecules, according to MDS Scientific.

To design the product, teams of design and manufacturing engineers worked with scientists to convert breadboards--mock-ups developed by scientists in a research laboratory--into a streamlined, workable spectrometer called QStar.

Breadboards are essentially science experiments for proving concepts and are much too complex to build and use, said George Valaitis, the manager of mechanical engineering at MDS Sciex, a division of MDS.

"The scientists file parts to fit and wire pieces together," Valaitis said. Then, teams of design engineers and manufacturing engineers work with the scientists to convert breadboards into commercial products. Even after simplification, the QStar contained 8,000 parts, 1,500 of which are unique.

To simplify the breadboard, engineers had to redesign it so it had as few components as practical and they needed to devise components that were self-jigging and self-locating. They used Design for Assembly software from Boothroyd Dewhurst of Wakefield, R.I., to analyze the breadboard design and find ways to consolidate parts and eliminate assembly difficulties. MDS Sciex had used the company's software on earlier projects to simplify designs (Computing, December 2000).

Through a series of guides and questions, the software helps engineers find ways to simplify the structure of their product and thereby reduce part costs as well as assembly costs.

The engineers calculate that the software helped them reduce the development cycle by 20 percent, allowing them to get the QStar to market in 14 months after initial breadboard design, according to MDS.