Austria 2

Gernot Dopler (19)

City/Region: Wr. Neustadt, Lower-Austria E-mail: dopGe@sms.at Hobbies: Computers, weight training Career: Mechanical engineer School: HTBLuVA

Florian Fest (19)

City/Region: Pottendorf, Lower-Austria E-mail: baskit@hellknights.net Hobbies: Computers Career: Mechanical engineer School: HTBLuVA

Singling Out Medical Gauze Balls

Florian and Gernot were looking for a challenge! They decided to try and devise a mechanical device that could single out gauze balls - the thin fabric that is widely used in medicine for surgical dressings. After exploring a number of basic theoretical considerations they were determined to keep their costs low. So their first experiments were made with the school's vibratory feeder. The boys decided to suck the gauze balls out of a container by using air pressure. In their first successful attempt they sucked the balls upwards. However due to the high costs this approach was abandoned. They then tried to suck the gauze balls downwards. However, due to unforeseen factors such as compression of the gauze balls and the gauze balls forming an obstruction, this approach was also discarded. A new improved version of the experiment was devised in order to compensate for these factors. It consisted of flexible sidewalls that caused a rearrangement of the gauze balls in front of the nozzles. Due to the unfavourable side-effects this too turned out to be useless. The two boys had to find a solution that neither compressed nor obstructed the balls. They came up with the idea of a rotating movement that would agitate the gauze balls so a new arrangement could be produced in front of the nozzles. This prevented the compression of the gauze balls and proved to be the solution to singling out, transporting and sorting out the gauze balls.