Iowa Breast Cancer Simulator

connections to Rogge’s tumor-holding apparatus are complete, only thing left to do is make the box and the breast tissue itself

The wire-wrapped circuit is complete. The only thing it needs is changes to accommodate the connections and placement in the box.

The relays have arrived.   The large ones are a tiny bit bigger than Rogge’s specs allow us, however the small ones are just under the specs, and should work perfectly.   The small relays’ coils even run off of 5 volts and have a current rating of 5A.  

I have ordered the relays. I decided to order 4 relays, 2 of one type, 2 of another, and i ordered their corresponding mounting sockets as well.

I have completed the wirewrapping of most of the circuit.   Mike is installing the button wires using a the very clever idea of a ribbon cable.   I have   hopefully found a suitable relay for the motor reversing part of the circuit.  

The Wire-wrapping is going very slowly.   I’ve tested the part of the circuit that deals with creating the clock signal, but it appears not to work.   I am currently trying to fix it.

Circuit augmentation plans are complete, we will use a JK flip flop and an H-bridge to control the motor direction with the fifth bit sent from the computer.   Computer-circuit communications have been repaired.   We will order the H-bridge in a few days.

Final milling of the plate holding the compression arms resulted in delamination   of the workpiece.   We’ll either have to change materials or find plastic thick enough that we don’t have to laminate two pieces together.

The circuit has been debugged and fixed.   It now works like it did before when Mike had it built.   The circuit was designed so that the motor would not have to change direction, however, the new breast simulator model requires the motor to turn direction.   We are now going to augment the circuit using an H-bridge and a JK flip flop to control the motor direction with the computer.

Welcome to the Iowa Breast Cancer Simulator Research Blog. We are working on simulating breast tumors in a model breast to help medical students learn how to perform Clinical Breast Examinations. The purpose of this blog is to provide information and allow communication among the team members and with the interested public.