Micro-Leads Medical

Due to Micro-Leads being a startup environment, with around 12 employees, I was responsible for a wide range of tasks. My main goal was to develop a novel way to weld the composite stimulator tips to the wire-carrying leads, which involved welding platinum, silicon and steel together in a process that had to be quick, easy, and completely biosafe in a tiny area. 

My key responsibilities were:

• Development of the lead attachment process

• Development of hypodermic needle for lead placement

• Redesign and creation of rat-spinal implants

• Fulfilment of nerve cuff orders as they were received

• Preparations for animal studies

Skills developed:

• Laser cutting (custom class IV picosecond laser)

• AutoCAD

• SolidWorks

• 3D Printing (Formlabs SLA)

• Resistance Welding

• Polymer Welding

By the conclusion of the co-op I worked out a method that was much faster, cheaper and easier to build the leads than the existing way, accelerating development across multiple projects.

A smaller project I worked on was finding parameters for laser etching colors onto titanium. If the laser is slightly below the power to ablate metal, it forms a layer of metal oxide on the surface of the sheet, which has a slightly different color. For Titanium, its oxides can be almost any color depending on depth, so for my project I procedurally tested and cataloged parameters for every color. This process was used on marking the IPGs (Implantable Pulse Generator), with information like the model number, pinout and serial number, without introducing materials like dyes which might wear off during implant.