Laboratory sample processing challenges drive innovation at IDEX® Health; Science. A division of IDEX Corp., IDEX Health; Science manufactures the precision microfluidics system components—including valves, pumps, manifolds, filings, injectors, and tubing systems—that support sophisticated laboratory instruments, such as liquid chromatographs, mass spectrometers, and DNA analysis systems.
Maximizing throughput is critically important in the highly competitive laboratory market, according to Mechanical Design Engineer Kevin Longley. “The more throughput that laboratories can get, the more money they make,” Longley explains. “They get more throughput by using higher pressure to push more samples through the column. The first high-pressure liquid chromatography valves were rated at about 500 psi. The Rheodyne® valves that we develop at IDEX today handle 30,000 psi of pressure. So, we’re pushing incredibly small volumes—in some cases as lile as 0.1 microliters—at extremely high pressure to increase throughput and make it more economical for labs to purchase equipment.”
To achieve microfluidics breakthroughs, the company’s engineers needed access to integrated design and simulation tools. IDEX decided to migrate from Pro/ENGINEER® software to integrated SOLIDWORKS solutions in 2001. “IDEX standardized on SOLIDWORKS because it’s easy to use and facilitates training, yet provides powerful structural and fluid-flow simulation tools,” Longley explains. “With SOLIDWORKS, I don’t even notice the software. It doesn’t slow me down or force me to jump through hoops. It’s really just an extension of the work I do.”
IDEX acquired 120 licenses of SOLIDWORKS Professional design and SOLIDWORKS Premium design and analysis software, the SOLIDWORKS Simulation Premium and SolidWorks Flow Simulation analysis applications, and the SOLIDWORKS Enterprise PDM product data management system. “Because SOLIDWORKS solutions are so intuitive, we can focus on our designs and not on the tools. This allows us to innovate more precise designs while simultaneously streamlining our development processes,” Longley says.
Simulating what’s going to happen
As the complexity of IDEX designs has grown, so has its reliance on SolidWorks Simulation and SolidWorks Flow Simulation tools. “Much of what we do would be near-impossible to do by hand,” Longley stresses. “The tubing we use is 1/32nd of an inch in diameter, but the inner diameters are 0.004 inches. With such small passages and such high pressure driving such small fluid volumes through the system, simulation is a must. We conduct flow simulations on products that involve mixing and structural finite element analysis (FEA) on just about everything else.
“Our valves experience forces that want to pull them apart, so we need to conduct FEAs on every single link in the project,” he continues. “We use analysis to ensure that the design will hold up prior to prototyping. That’s done on every valve that we make. Using SOLIDWORKS Simulation as part of our design process cuts 90 percent of the prototyping loops that were required in the past.”
