B.AMBU

During the COVID-19 pandemic i was called by the vice-dean, James McPhee, to asses if the school of engineering at the University of Chile had the capacity to develop an emergency ventilator. I said yes, and gathered a multidiscplinary team of engineers and designers to build the prototype. I was part of the mechanical team, we were responsible for the chasis and actuation mechanism.

It was a hard but stimulating experience, here is an article about it. We made 5 units of the machine, and it was successfully tested on animals. The project finished at the human testing phase, as the Ministry of Health stated that it was not an emergency anymore.

We made a last version of the prototype (that looks really nice), but we did not get to finish it. Some acrylics parts were missing.

We also developed an air flowmeter, measuring pressure before and after a resistance in the flow (a deformable laminar piece). We were able to see a trend, but the signal was noisy.