W.S.G. Isaac Newton

My internship was at Demcon Life Science and Health. This department develops solutions for improved and more efficient healthcare with innovative systems and products. One of the ongoing projects focuses on the development, together with other international companies and research groups active in the biomedical field, of a device for the automatable screening of pathogens and nutrients of a sample taken from a bioreactor. My assignment was to achieve the straightforward coupling of two photonic chips within this device with an accuracy of <1µm. Based on the outcome of a morphological overview, several concepts were designed for the micro alignment (so that misalignment of 1mm can be compensated within a tolerance of ±1μm) which could be divided into flexure-based concepts and kinematic coupling-based concepts. 3D printed mockups were made to get a feeling of the different concepts and the feasibility of all concepts was analyzed based on size, producibility, and complexity. One of the flexure concepts was chosen and this concept was further detailed to a final design that also included the initial alignment (placing the cartridge with one chip in the device from a 1mm distance to the other chip). Further recommendations were given for producibility and further design, as the assignment was too big for only 11 weeks (as already was known beforehand).

I enjoyed my internship as I could work in a project group, attend and plan brainstorming sessions, ask fellow engineers or my supervisor for help when needed, see a little bit of the other projects that people were working on and, last but not least, I felt included within the company.