What did we learn from the "open source ventilator" mess....... - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Smokey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2020, 12:19:31 pm
content: Now that the dust has settled and it's not apparently trending anymore...If you got caught up in the open source ventilator rush and spent any amount of time thinking about that problem seriously, try out these questions. It's never a total waste of time if you learned something.1) Raise your hand if... You learned something about being way overconfident in your own functional skills.2) Raise your hand if... You learned being a "maker" isn't the same as being an engineer.3) Raise your hand if... You learned that the design of a life critical medical device is more complicated than you thought and deserves more respect than you thought.4) Raise your hand if... You learned that knowing something about electronics or software does not imply you can design mechanical systems.5) Raise your hand if... You learned that even if you have a functional design, that does not mean you can successfully manufacture a product.6) Raise your hand if... You learned that always having 100% "open source" ideological purity isn't really that important and harping on it isn't always helpful.7) Raise your hand if... After learning how silly the basic idea of open source community designed ventilators are, you volunteered delivering food to old folks in your community or some other useful activity.It's one thing to have an engineering mindset and be curious about how things work and want to go through the exercise of learning how to do things for it's own sake. In that case, fine. Build yourself a ventilator in your garage. It's another thing entirely to take on the stance that you and your friends on the internet are seriously intending to do what the big companies can't and save the world by becoming functional in the cumulative understanding of a whole handful of distinct engineering careers in a matter of weeks in order to create a reliable life critical medical device for mass production and anyone who thinks that's crazy just needs to shut up and get out of your way. As it turns out, what we should have all been working on was "open source toilet paper". We would have been rich!

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2020, 12:45:50 pm
content: Can't you simply 3D print toilet paper?

author: Smokey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2020, 12:47:38 pm
content: Quote from: madires on July 06, 2020, 12:45:50 pmChallenge accepted!

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2020, 12:51:39 pm
content: I learnt that some people would rather die than be put on a ventilator which is not fully medically tested and certified. It kinda surprised me.

author: GlennSprigg
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2020, 01:04:08 pm
content: Quote from: Smokey on July 06, 2020, 12:19:31 pmI really DO understand what you are saying, mate. However, in times like these, we DO have to Bypass themyriad of normal 'regulations' that authorities/nations would/should 'normally' impinge, on generic productsappearing on the market generally. It would be quite evident, very early on, which ones are a waste of time,but there may be many others that may help, and make a difference, where immediate global production islimited for many reasons. If it 'works', then just do/try it!! I wouldn't want the life of say my Father or Grand-Father to rely on some Fabrication/Legal/Govt clause 117.3.b etc to block someone's production, if it HELPS!!

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2020, 01:06:41 pm
content: Quote from: madires on July 06, 2020, 12:45:50 pmhttps://www.3dnatives.com/en/paper-pulp-printer-launched-replaces-plastic-3d-prints-paper-waste-091120184/https://qz.com/110498/a-3d-printer-that-uses-wait-for-it-printer-paper/

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2020, 01:09:59 pm
content: Quote from: Psi on July 06, 2020, 12:51:39 pmDon't be a twat. If they needed a ventilator, they were in no position to be able to give informed consent.Having built a lung ventilator, over half a lifetime ago, I know there are a lot of subtle ways that it can kill,even if it works correctly and according to specification.

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2020, 01:12:51 pm
content: That was kind-of my point, i was surprised so many people were being twats about it.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2020, 01:17:19 pm
content: Quote from: Psi on July 06, 2020, 01:12:51 pmReally? I can't see how your statement can be interpreted that way...Quote from: Psi on July 06, 2020, 12:51:39 pm

author: Rerouter
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2020, 01:19:01 pm
content: I learned that biologists researching other options can really be divided into lazy, incompetent, career chasers and actual good people like any work place, and that scares the crap out of me more than the few thousand half hearted attempts at accidentally killing people over misunderstanding all the requirements.

author: Smokey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2020, 01:29:05 pm
content: Quote from: GlennSprigg on July 06, 2020, 01:04:08 pmI fully support the people who are out there working their asses off to make the things that people need right now. That includes all the professionals and engineering companies and groups working on ventilators. Those aren't the people I have issues with though.The family of the dude who's lungs you pop with your "device" won't care about how many other lives you may have saved.

author: DrG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2020, 02:19:44 pm
content: Quote from: Smokey on July 06, 2020, 12:19:31 pmCan't say you have not made some good points, because I think you have.I just want to offer, what I think is a successful example, of a successful open source ventilator project...https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7661https://www.techbriefs.com/component/content/article/tb/stories/blog/36790https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/eight-us-manufacturers-selected-to-make-nasa-covid-19-ventilatorNo, it was most-definitely NOT made in a single person's garage. It is a story that, I think, complements the issues that you raised.It is open source (at least insofar as I think of open source).The design engineers, who were not in the ventilator business, learned what it was supposed to do by asking the medical profession what it was supposed to do and working with them.The "team" included engineers from many different areas ( e.g.,https://hackaday.com/2020/06/08/rapid-prototyping-hack-chat/#more-415947).The team implemented rapid prototyping that exemplifies to me, what 'rapid prototyping" means (again, my opinion). " It was designed, prototyped, and tested on an incredibly ambitious timetable: 37 days total." - that is the usual quote...not going to stick my neck out on that one, but the point is, when an eclectic approach is used (one that involves expertise in many different areas), the chance of success is increased.The team understood and worked with regulatory folks (see FDA faciltation).It is an impressive story and one that does not refute what you are saying, it elaborates upon what you are saying.It does not nullify the role of the individual, it realizes the role of the individual.

author: Smokey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2020, 11:52:58 pm
content: Quote from: DrG on July 06, 2020, 02:19:44 pmYes! What the JPL team did was pretty cool. There is always a place for the skunkworks mentality, where you get the best people together and just get out of their way. And I fully recognize and appreciate the individual contributions of the engineers. When it comes down to it, it's all about the individual engineers. Good managers really only exist to remove roadblocks for the engineers.I think it's really telling that the team that succeeded came from JPL. We are already talking about some of the best of the best. If you needed more qualifications, that organization made the mars rovers which had a spec for a minimum 90 days of operation but continued working for 15 years!!!!! I can guarantee these guys weren't soliciting help from the hackaday community for design reviews. They weren't monitoring the community spreadsheet which kept an opensource purity score for all the worldwide hacker projects. They weren't putting up fiverr listing for Arduino code. They just got to work. When they needed help they pulled in the experts they knew already had the skills they needed. They didn't ask some super excited dude on the internet to catch up on years of technical understand and experience and wait for him to maybe contribute.The JPL team (and I'm sure some other teams like them) are exactly what the world needed. The experts were on it. Everything else was just noise. All of the media attention of high school kids and their garage projects was just a distraction. You want an experienced pilot flying the plane, not a student on the first day or some dude who played a flight simulator once.It's an important skill to be able to take a step back and say to yourself, "Self, This is actually important and I'm not qualified to be here right now".

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 12:04:28 am
content: Quote from: tggzzz on July 06, 2020, 01:09:59 pmHere we go again.So it's better to let someone die because they haven't given consent to try something that may be risky in order to save their life? Yes, I'm absolutely surprised that people actually think the way you seem to, floored actually. I seriously hope that if I'm going to die and unable to express my wishes that I have a doctor who is willing to be creative and try something novel to save me. If it works, great, if I die, well I was probably going to die anyway, at least they tried. I cannot even fathom why someone would think it better to simply let me (or anyone) die because the lifesaving device/procedure had risk. I'm seriously completely baffled by the attitude :But what did happen with all this ventilator stuff anyway? My perception is that they managed to scrape up enough machines to get by,t combined with aggressive social distancing reduced the numbers to where we didn't need to take more drastic measures.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 12:07:29 am
content: Quote from: Smokey on July 06, 2020, 01:29:05 pmPerhaps that is a reflection of just how incredibly self centered many people are. They don't care about lives saved, they only care about the life of their person.

author: sokoloff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 12:40:13 am
content: Quote from: tggzzz on July 06, 2020, 01:09:59 pmOn the other hand, if someone needs a ventilator and doesn't get one, there's not a lot of variety in how that story ends.

author: John B
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 01:22:20 am
content: The ventilators would itself have to operate within an existing system of people, institutions and regulations, with responsibilities and liabilities. So the idea of of a patient giving consent to try a piece of untested/unregulated equipment, then someone actually administering treatment on hospital grounds is unrealistic.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 02:27:55 am
content: So I guess in that situation we should just throw up our hands and let people die because otherwise we might kill some of them? I swear some people live in a completely different reality than I do.Imagine what WWII would have been like if people had insisted that all new aircraft go through the full certification process before they were allowed to carry people and be flown into battle because "what if" one of those uncertified and hastily designed and assembled aircraft failed in flight and people died.We'd have to get the informed consent of every soldier, official or civillian who might fly on one and everyone who might be on the ground underneath one. Meanwhile you get pummeled by the axis forces who aren't bothered by such details. Personally I'm glad we threw caution into the wind and got the job done rather than sit mired in bureaucracy that peacetime allows for. Some of these aircraft did fail due to flaws in their design and/or construction, people died as a result, but overall vastly more people were saved.

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 02:51:54 am
content: You don't have to imagine: that's what in fact happened.The P-51 Mustang, probably the most iconic US warbird, had "an uncommonly short development period, even during the war"; it first flew 149 days after the contract was drawn up. Its firstdeploymentwasover a year laterwhen it entered service in the RAF.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_P-51_MustangThe operational history of Axis planes shows similarly long programmes of testing and refinement.(The Me-262 took overthree yearsfrom its first flight until deployment in the Luftwaffe)

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 02:54:33 am
content: Quote from: james_s on July 07, 2020, 02:27:55 amJames, unfortunately in those days people and society were vastly different and a comparison has become quite difficult to fathom. I mentioned this in another thread, but the expectation of "safety at all costs" warped societies into thinking that we can protect or safeguard ourselves and risk has become a tainted concept with the general public. The conundrum nowadays regarding masks and infections with a 1% kill ratio tells us something about how people would react boarding an airplane or an LCV where chances of returning were quite unfavourable.Regarding the ventilators, their need was severely reduced as initially the reported death rates were astonishingly high and they were being used more indiscriminately. Nowadays it seems they are being used more selectively and therefore the demand for makeshift equipment is not severe.https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/more-covid-19-patients-are-surviving-ventilators-in-the-icu/2020/07/03/2e3c3534-bbca-11ea-8cf5-9c1b8d7f84c6_story.html

author: Smokey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 03:20:48 am
content: Why argue about if we should allow garage shop ventilators to be used in hospitals when there is a better solution to the problem? This is sort of the mentality I'm trying to point out is stupid here.The choices aren't garage shop ventilator or die.The third option is...... Let professional engineers who solve problems for a living make a professional quality ventilator to a reasonable spec, get that thing certified quickly, and then use that! As pointed out, the JPL team finished their design AND got it certified in 37 days. Because that's what they do. Respect. The "makers" on the internet were still trying to figure out what the little triangle symbol on the schematic meant at 37 days and making mechanical death traps out of stuff they found in their garage.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 04:07:06 am
content: Quote from: helius on July 07, 2020, 02:51:54 amThat's crazy fast, just over a year from the contract being drawn up to deployment? The development and certification time for something like a civilian airliner is more like 4-8 years. The Me-262 was a bit of a special case since it was an entirely new type of aircraft, metallurgy was not yet up to the needs of producing a reliable axial flow jet engine and IIRC even the very last production models had engines that could last approximately 25 hours of flight time. It was held back by limitations of the technology available at the time, not by bureaucracy.The entire war spanned just 6 years and within that period many dozens of different aircraft went from the drawing board to large scale deployment. Technological development went from fabric covered biplanes to early jet powered fighters, the speed at which all of this happened was unlike anything we have seen before or since. Almost none of those aircraft were certified the way they would have had to be in peacetime, that was bypassed and they were rushed into service. Practically overnight we had companies transition from building things like cars and washing machines to airplanes and engines, there wasn't time to worry about regulations and red tape, we just did it.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 04:18:32 am
content: Quote from: Smokey on July 07, 2020, 03:20:48 amWe know that now, we didn't know that at the time.When the open source stuff was being developed it was a response to dire predictions of tens of thousands of people dying due to a lack of available ventilators. We can hardly blame people for making efforts to solve this problem, it's easy with the benefit of hindsight to point it out as a wasted effort, but had things panned out differently that may not have been the case. If we'd had hundreds of people dying every day, people being rejected from hospitals due to lack of available space, equipment and staff and it had turned out that ventilators were critical to patient survival I don't think it's unreasonable to imagine makeshift clinics operated by loosely trained volunteers using whatever equipment they could get their hands on, or creative people taking care of their family and neighbors. There are plenty of real world examples of this sort of thing in war-torn third world countries.The open source projects were abandoned due to lack of necessity as the predicted acute shortage of proper certified machines never materialized, not because an amateur or volunteer constructed machine couldn't have saved lives.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 04:49:24 am
content: Quote from: Smokey on July 06, 2020, 12:19:31 pm8 ) Raise your hand if you learned that 90% of covid patients who go on ventilators die anywayhttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-22/almost-9-in-10-covid-19-patients-on-ventilators-died-in-study

author: filssavi
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 04:53:12 am
content: I would not conflate the open source philosophy with makers.On one hand you have a development method used by thousands of software engineers and programmers, used to develop, most of the software stack that runs the modern world (if all open source software stopped working today, we would be thrown back to the late 1800 basically).On the other you have a bunch of donning Kruger know it all “makers”. Who, strong of their experience building led lighting and crappy second year undergraduate control systems, think that in a matter of weeks you can go from not knowing anything about a subject to mass production (which in itself for a maker is almost risible); only taking care of posting each brain fart on some blog/YouTube/website for publicityThe JPL team, on the other hand, for which I have massive respect, did the design, I’m shure with the help of life support specialists at NASA and their institutional knowledge in the field, got it certified, and then posted online for publicity. That is a much different attitude.As for certification, the regulators know full well that doing a full blown year+ certification in those conditions of need was unthinkable, they started doing emergency certifications, which were both much faster and much easier to get.To end on a hopeful note, not all makers are so hopelessly full of themselves, a bunch of people’s (the majority I hope) rightfully identified an area where they could indeed help, and started 3D printing face shield components. PPEs are just as important and lifesaving as ventilators (actually they might even be more important) and are a much easier target, since a malfunction will not result in life altering injuries or death

author: filssavi
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 05:05:01 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on July 07, 2020, 04:49:24 amUnfortunately those are roughly the statistics for emergency ALS/Emergency ICU in general as well I think.In my interpretation is that if the patient is in such a bad situation to need such intensive degree of treatment their situation is desperate, and if left to their own devices would have died for sure.There were also some years ago (Unrelated to Covid) some papers that questioned if ALS is even worth it, or if we should abolish it altogether (in my opinion they were flawed studies but who am I to judge).

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 05:15:02 am
content: I learned the importance of understanding the project specifications before designing the thing.Pretty much 95% of all the maker built ventilators had no clue of what a ventilator is supposed to do so they ended up building various mechanical contraptions for repeatably squeezing a manual handheld ventilator.Tesla did a good example of how to do it properly. Granted it was likely more of a PR stunt (I don't have any info on how many they actually made and deployed) but at least it was engineered spot on.

author: Smokey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 05:57:43 am
content: Quote from: filssavi on July 07, 2020, 04:53:12 amI personally use open source whenever possible, and on the rare occasion have actually tweaked the code to fix/add something, so I get it. I agree that the world pretty much runs on Linux under the hood. The open source model works really well in some circumstances. But I'm not naive enough to believe that everything needs to be open source, or that everything would be better if it was open source. That's a level of ideology bordering on religious. The bashing of Medtronic for not meeting the level of full open source purity when they released their design was pretty shocking to me. As I said elsewhere, if the only thing they had done was release their full specification (which I think they did first), that would have been worthy of sainthood to any capable engineering group wanting to take on the task of making a production ready ventilator. But instead they got shit on by the open source purists, which incidentally are a big part of the group of people who had delusions that they were capable of doing the job themselves in their garages. It was pretty obvious no one was going to take the old Medtronic design and start spinning up production, so who cares if you don't have the full CAD models for the injection molds.And yes, the PPE and other things the Makers were doing was/is great. Fully support that. When I visited the hospital about 6 weeks ago a bunch of the nurses all had 3D printed mask holder bands to save their ears from the elastic, and they loved them. I'm fully on board for using whatever skills you have to help, but being careful because overextending can be counter productive.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 06:18:35 am
content: Quote from: james_s on July 07, 2020, 12:04:28 amDoctors have this Hippocratic oath to contend with; primum non nocere and all that.Then they have to contend with lawyers who will convince the corpse's relatives that the doctor did something not sanctioned by the medical profession. However invalid, lawsuits are something doctors try to avoid.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 11:07:10 am
content: Quote from: james_s on July 07, 2020, 12:04:28 amThere are some nuances here. Being put on a ventilator is not like a walk in the park. Chances are extremely high you end up worse with a very low quality of life if you survive (let alone being put on a less than ideal ventilator). Some of my older family members have a 'do not ventilate' card in their wallet for this reason.Being alive and having quality of life can be very distinct; not all cultures seem to be aware of this.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 11:28:55 am
content: First Do No Harm. A open source ventilator which is not certified means it is not proven not to cause harm.But then again, engineers have the equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath, though I've seen people not remembering it.Engineers shall perform services only in the areas of their competence.Engineers shall undertake assignments only when qualified by education or experience in the specific technical fields involved.And learning the difference between "it works" and "it is properly designed, and it should be placed in production, and people can trust their life on it" is somewhat important. Just once, you should design something, that in case of malfunction can kill someone. And go to bed every night after that, and sleep normally.

author: Gyro
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 11:50:44 am
content: Quote from: Berni on July 07, 2020, 05:15:02 amThe Dyson one got canned by the NHS before it was ready. I'm not sure if that one was a PR stunt or an attempt to break into the medical devices market. From the pictures I saw, I suspect that their schedule was hampered by having to decide on the colour scheme and how stylish it should look first.[cynical mode off]

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 02:14:37 pm
content: Quote from: NANDBlog on July 07, 2020, 11:28:55 amBasically yes.Exception"... that in case ofnormal operation as designedcan kill someone...".

author: donotdespisethesnake
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 04:53:19 pm
content: Things that the "Open Source ventilator" saga showed:1. Most people have no clue what is required to make a medical grade ventilator2. Most people have no clue that the medical profession are not willing to use unproven devices on patients3. Most people have no clue what Open Source meanstldr; most people are clueless. But we already knew that.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 05:10:48 pm
content: Quote from: tggzzz on July 07, 2020, 06:18:35 amOk, well screw it then, let them die, it's safer than trying to help and helping wrong. I'd like to think that in a really dire situation people would react differently. Maybe it's a cultural thing? I've noticed most of the "OMG it HAS to be properly certified!!" people are not in the USA, many of us here have more of a "think outside the box and just get it done" attitude, or used to anyway.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 05:24:04 pm
content: Quote from: Smokey on July 07, 2020, 05:57:43 amThe Medtronic thing was obviously targeted at companies capable of producing devices of that nature already. If you are already manufacturing equipment and there is a dire enough need, having that design available greatly reduces the amount of reinventing the wheel that needs to be done. Also it was fascinating to be able to look at the design and see just how these things work.The PPE is a great example of hospitals using equipment made by non-traditional suppliers, I remember people stating flat out that would never happen, that hospitals would never buy any sort of gear from random suppliers like that and yet they did. While I agree that some people are overconfident, pie in the sky types, I'm equally annoyed at the "it will never work, it's a stupid idea, don't even bother trying" crowd. That group will always sit around and accomplish nothing, while the group attempting the impossible will occasionally succeed. There's something that all very successful people have in common, they had the audacity to try and keep trying to pull off something. Look at SpaceX and Blue Origin for example, how would people 40 years ago react if you told them that in just a few decades private companies started by tech billionaires would be sending rockets into space? It's preposterous! That could never happen! Yet it has happened, and governments of superpowers are paying them for their services. A vastly larger number of people with big ideas have failed to get anywhere, but a few succeeded. 100% of those who decided not to try because it was futile failed.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 06:19:08 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on July 07, 2020, 05:24:04 pmThat is a false dichotomy that you have invented.I will tell peoplewhytheir ideas won't work, and also be receptive to new possibilities. That's what I've been doing my whole professional career in R&D. I sometimes get it wrong, but I've learned to trust my inderstanding and intuition.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 07:13:24 pm
content: Quote from: tggzzz on July 07, 2020, 06:19:08 pmI think that was more meant at the stubborn kind of people that are fully and wholly convinced that the way they do something is the only correct way to do it. That kind of person who knows how to use a hammer and sees every problem as some variation of a nail. So when a very non nail-like problem pops up and the said hammer doesn't work the answer is "This is not possible to do". Yet it is perfectly possible if a screwdriver was used instead of a hammer, but too bad that he refuses to listen to any screwdriver related solutions because the hammer is clearly the superior tool because he has been using it for the last 25 years.The issue is that it can be hard to tell the difference between this narrow minded hammer aficionado and an actual competent expert that is trying to tell you that this indeed will not work.But yes people often don't like being told that there silly idea won't work, even if this is being explained by an actual expert that knows how badly the idea will indeed fail.

author: daqq
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 08:28:52 pm
content: Copying my response from a previous thread (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/dodgy-technology/sars-ncov-2covid-fueled-hype-enabled-ventilators/):Quote

author: Gyro
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 09:24:13 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on July 07, 2020, 05:10:48 pmYou're kidding right? You have the most litigious society in the world.Mind you, buying up the world production of Remdesvir for the next few months is certainly a "just get it done attitude" (not to mention a 'screw them' one)!

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 09:36:15 pm
content: What i learned is the following :- the medical world had no clue how to treat this novel virus. They applied time-proven procedures, only to find out they don't work with new diseases. ( note : this is not a blame. nobody know how this thing behaves, even now much of it is still an unknown)- 90% of people ending up on ventilators , died ... because the ventilators cause massive damage to the lungs in case of covid.- the reason the demand for ventilators has gone away is because they do not work for covid. It is better to feed to patient 100% oxygen using a demand mask , or a 'hood' than using intubation and forced ventilation. Some hospitals adapted a simple full-face snorkeling mask and hooked it to a 100% oxygen supply or a cpap machine. it worked way better than ventilators. less load on the patient.if you end up on a true ventilator with covid you are essentially dying with very little hope of recovery ...Stay safe !

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2020, 09:50:30 pm
content: Quote from: free_electron on July 07, 2020, 09:36:15 pmNot quite.They tried and are still trying remedies in the cupboard. Not procedures.The procedures used to discover and assess the remedies continue to be valid.QuoteAIUI that is too much of a simplification.QuoteVerylittle is too strong.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 08, 2020, 02:19:44 am
content: Quote from: james_s on July 07, 2020, 05:24:04 pmI don't understand why Medtronic couldn't just ramp up existing production and pump out all the ventilators needed?

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2020, 02:34:59 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on July 08, 2020, 02:19:44 amPerhaps because they may have been burned in the past, just like Prestige Ameritech here in DFW area:QuoteSource:https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2020/02/26/north-texas-face-mask-manufacturer-coronavirus-demand/

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 08, 2020, 03:07:30 am
content: Quote from: rsjsouza on July 08, 2020, 02:34:59 amOr perhaps, just perhaps, they needed some good publicity:https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/business/coronavirus-us-ventilator-shortage.html

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2020, 05:27:54 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on July 08, 2020, 03:07:30 amSo the medical equipment vendors are also all greedy unethical capitalists like the pharmaceutical industry.Then again this is how most big companies do business. That big board of directors does whatever it takes to please the shareholders and investors. They don't care who they piss off as long as the numbers are going up and up.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2020, 05:38:14 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on July 08, 2020, 02:19:44 amThis question cuts to the heart of one of the issues. Medtronic has a design. And a supply chain that is tooled up and certified at a production rate. Ramping up production requires either shortening process steps (No you don't have to do a 10 hour burn in on part Z before test.....) or increasing parallelism (adding new suppliers, etc.). Both choices involve going outside the approved design box, with unknown risks. Adding parallel lines doesn't churn stuff out faster for a while, it depends on how long it takes to buy and install machinery and the like. Often all of these steps require certification from some agency which has its own staffing and scheduling problems.There was a public evaluation of production increases at one vendor of PPE. His normal rate involved two shifts of production on his line, the third shift being used for repairs and preventative maintenance on the line. He increased production in the short term by 50% by running production all three shifts. But was aware that maintenance was going to cause issues sooner or later. He had his older production line in storage and was bringing it out of mothballs, but there was setup time (measured in weeks as I recall) and it wasn't going to double capacity because the old line had been designed for a lower rate. He also had to find and train operators for the line as his workforce overtime was already saturated by running three shifts. Going up beyond that on production was going to require buying all new machinery, hiring and training more people, and was going to require developing suppliers capacity also. The machinery was all custom stuff, so it wasn't just a matter of opening the appropriate catalog and buying it, it was buying pieces, arranging for fabrication of other pieces, then assembling, tuning and testing the result.Over multiple months increasing production is realistic. Doing it in days or weeks is limited.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 08, 2020, 06:39:52 am
content: Quote from: CatalinaWOW on July 08, 2020, 05:38:14 amYes, but it'svastly easier and quickerthan having other people/companies take their existing design docs and do it all from scratch using new suppliers and processes and personnel etc.If the government wanted to they could have requested (and paid for) companies like Medtronics to ramp up their output.Open sourcing their design docs under a very restrictive license was little more than a dog and pony show, and they know it.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2020, 07:03:31 am
content: The difficulty of ramping up production can vary a lot.Yes a heavily automated high volume production line (such as one that spits out multiple facial masks per second) has no room for speed up. All you can do is make sure it keeps running 24/7 while setting up a second parallel one takes a long time.But production lines for complex low volume products are not like that (such as a line making high end oscilloscopes or heck medical ventilators). Those are not the same perfectly timed clockwork operations. They might normally make production runs of 100s to 1000s of units where they order the plastic cases, boards, PSUs etc... Once the stuff arrives they get a bunch of people together to assemble it, test it and put it into boxes that go in the warehouse to be sold. Once the warehouse starts running low they push the button for another production run. The same people that put together those oscilloscopes this week might be putting together signal generators the next week.So on these low volume manual production lines you can ramp up production a lot. The plastic injection moldering supplier just stamps out more ventilator plastic housings rather than washing machine control housings that costumer canceled the order for because there factory is shut down. The people assembling them are not a terribly high skilled force and in a large company you can find workers to move into an extra production shift, you can reduce the production of other products to free up more time on the shared production floor.. etc The only issue might be any specialized test rigs in quality control, they might only have one test rig that is not designed to handle such a volume and a second one would have to be custom built from scratch. But perhaps you can run the test rig now 24/7 while before it might have been run on a single normal 8 hour shift.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2020, 07:21:35 am
content: At the early stages of the disease there was strong evidence to suggest a 10 million+ worldwide death toll; ultimately it looks like it will peter out below 1 million, depending on how the USA and Brazil behave over the next 3 months.If the death toll continued to increase, an open source ventilator designed to a minimum, fair standard (certainly not one of those 'bag-squeezing' machines) may have been worthwhile, IF it could be spun up quickly. But, I think ultimately, it would have been better to take an existing design and mass produce it. The secondary issue that no one seemed to mention is that nurses, doctors, etc are all trained on a set of specific machines that they'd find in their hospital. They may need to be retrained to use new equipment, which could take days. Existing equipment is also pre-certified and likely to be safe by design, or at least its limitations are understood.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2020, 07:37:02 am
content: One perspective, from comp.arch.embeddedOn 08/07/20 04:36, Rick C wrote:> On Tuesday, July 7, 2020 at 10:02:45 PM UTC-4, Paul Rubin wrote:>> Rick C <gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> writes:>>> Wow! Designing in a group is strange. I'm helping with the design of a>>> ventilator and it is a unique experience.>>>> Sounds like fun, but why a ventilator? Is the ventilator shortage still>> happening and are there more urgent shortages? I thought there were>> already a bunch of ventilator projects.>>>> What is the software going to be like, and is it being taken care of? This>> sounds like a good opportunity to write some Ada code.>> Yeah, that was one of my first observations that there are tons of ventilator> projects. They nearly all are based on squeezing an Ambu-bag to push air> into the patient. The details of not harming the patient are tricky.> Ventilating a patient while conscious is harder and very few are doing that.> They seem to be having problems with the plumbing at the moment, getting all> the right valves in the right places to do the right things. At the moment> there is a lot of hardware right at the patient's mouth. I'm working to> understand what is needed and what isn't.>> There's a valve called a Ruben valve which allows the patient to be connected> to the inspiratory limb (branch from the ventilator) or to the expiratory> limb (the path for exhaling) without a leak to the outside via a straight> through path. It's not entirely clear just how the details of this valve> work. I have concerns that the valve can be stuck in the inhale position by> the pressure in the line. It doesn't seem to have a way to leak out once> pressurized.>> I'm not sure the software is too hard at the higher levels, but there are> interface procedures that have to convert differential pressure to flow rate> and monitor other marginal sensors. The O2 sensor is only ~18% accurate.> The guy running the project doesn't seem to understand the difference between> accuracy, resolution and noise when we were talking about increasing the> resolution of a reading by averaging many samples. Not that this was a big> deal. The real issue is I'm not sure improving the resolution of the> measurement will give him what he wants. The airflow measurement is very> sensitive at the low end. I'm wondering if there is an issue with the flow> being more or less laminar at the low end so that it is not going to be an> accurate reading. The interesting part is they verified the home brew flow> rate sensor by using a commercial flow rate sensor that uses the same> technique.>> Whatever. I'm trying to help without being a drag. I think sometimes my> questions are not what they want to hear. Maybe I'm too pessimistic.>> The software is C I believe. I don't think anyone in this crowd is going to> use Ada.

author: Smokey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 08, 2020, 11:51:15 am
content: I'm a little surprised how casually some of you are suggesting Medtronic should have just "ramped up", especially given that I know some of you actually have manufacturing experience. I would expect the market for ventilators was pretty stable and small volume so why would they have that extra capacity in place already? I can think of a few companies that failed because they had an unexpected bump in demand and botched the "ramp up".Another big question for me would be how many of the components used in the Medtronic ventilator were outsourced to China or India or one of the other countries that was effectively shut down at the beginning of the pandemic. Given modern parts sourcing and volume manufacturing strategies, I'm going to guess a significant number of parts (both custom and off the shelf) were not made locally and out of their direct control. So now you can't get your overseas factories to make higher number of parts you need and you can't get the parts shipped quickly anyway since the bulk transport was all messed up. At that point your only option would be to go through the pain and suffering of finding and qualifying a new local vendor at a time when the businesses are shut down and people are afraid they will die if they leave their house. The medical device certifications probably prohibit you from arbitrarily swapping vendors anyway, which could be waved in the emergency but that's one more hoop that needs jumping. Good luck with all that./speculation/In my opinion its plausible that Medtronic realized that what the world needed in that moment was essentially what it looks like the JPL team made, which was a high quality but stripped down machine built from parts that were actually available at that moment. To facilitate this, they released their full proved specification which as I've said elsewhere is essentially the highly valuable roadmap and up front investment to quickly making a functional device for anyone that's capable. They got that out first because that's the most important. Having the BOMs or the mechanical assemblies may be helpful from a reference standpoint, but if you are making things from scratch based on what you can get now they aren't necessary so they release those later for whatever reason. Since the expectation was that the result would be a new custom device anyway, they protected their specific machine design elements with a restrictive license long term.Now you may be asking why Medtronic didn't just make the new stripped down thing themselves, which is a legit question too. It takes a certain type of engineer and organization to function well in the skunkworks type environment. Unless that's what you do, you will probably fail if you try to sprint through a design. Developing things super quickly is a different skill and process, and I'm going to guess a big medical device company with multi-year design cycles is not set up that way.Of course, their evil open-source hating lawyers may have been scheming about how to trap unsuspecting do good engineers with subtle license clauses, but I'm not sure I'd go there first when there are other possibilities. With the spec being the investment, you don't just give that away hoping to get some publicity and eventual license royalties and especially not from a mega-corp. Maybe they were just actually trying to do good, and they still got shit on.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 09, 2020, 07:35:16 am
content: Quote from: Smokey on July 08, 2020, 11:51:15 amI'm saying that if the government put in a huge order Medtronics (and others) could have ramped up production, and done sovastly easier and quickerand to certification than anyone dicking around with the source files they released.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 09, 2020, 07:40:03 am
content: Quote from: Smokey on July 08, 2020, 11:51:15 amJones's Razor: Never attribute to genuine helpful intention that which can be adequately explained by a publicity opportunity.

author: donotdespisethesnake
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2020, 03:49:19 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on July 09, 2020, 07:40:03 amGood one, probably right in this case. I expect someone in the boardroom though it a good idea and made the order, after being filtered through the rest of the company (enginering, business, legal) they publish the design for the most obsolete product they have which has the least impact on their sales, and with the most restrictive license possible (CYA).But rather than rehashing old arguments about motivations, did any of these open designs actually get deployed in real hospitals?I guess the real lesson is that there rarely is a quick techno-fix for this type of problem, despite how much people would like one. What works is monitoring and tracking disease vectorsbeforethey become human-human transmissible, and contact tracking when they do. All of which is boring but well-known by the WHO, who try to encourage countries to do it, despite lack of funding or other political agendas getting in the way.Unfortunately, the interaction with humans and wild animals is generally increasing, as humans continue to expand into wild habitats. Nature has a way of dealing with "too many humans" (like any other excess population). Expect more pandemics. Build all the ventilators you want, it won't really help much.

author: schmitt trigger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2020, 04:06:08 pm
content: Daqq;From the sentence in your post: "All they needed was this balloon, a motor and a lot of duct tape.".............You forgot an Arduino. Indeed, definitively an Arduino.

author: Sal Ammoniac
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2020, 06:49:59 pm
content: Quote from: filssavi on July 07, 2020, 04:53:12 amHow did you come up with this ridiculous assertion? Do you think open source software was running the world in, say, 1950? 1970?So what is all of this open source software that runs the world? Linux? Apache? Sure, these are widely deployed open source applications, but you do realize, don't you, that there are other things out there that could take their place? Sure, you may think things like Windows Server and IIS are products of the Evil Empire, but they are perfectly functional and if open source alternatives didn't exist they would fill the gap.Sorry about the rant, but I'm getting tired of people claiming open source is the savior of the world and the only possible solution...

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2020, 07:04:50 pm
content: Quote from: schmitt trigger on July 09, 2020, 04:06:08 pm

author: ZaphodBeeblebrox
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2020, 07:57:06 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on July 09, 2020, 07:35:16 amWith this I wholeheartedly agree.The effort put into trying to manufacture the same ventilator (or a similar design) but without the actual knowlegde and/or resources to do so is not something to take lightly. A company already having said knowlegde and a supply chain in place only requires incentive to ramp up production (hey, capitalism has its advantages too!).Yes, I know, "we don't have the production capacity" or "we are unable to obtain parts". The former can actually be adressed by outsourcing production and the latter, well, the same thing applies: put in a huge order and watch the magic happen. Besides, the open source community didn't seem to have this "unable to obtain parts" thing (correct me if I'm wrong here). Does this mean it is easy for a company to "simply ramp up production": no, far from it. But is easier for a company having the experience than for a group of volunteers new to the task.Also, don't get me wrong: I think it was a great idea from the community to help out where needed by making ventilators. Alas, the execution of that thought went wrong somewhere along the road. I too must admit that there are open-source designs out there where I would rather take my chances without - because all you need is one single ESD event nearby and your lungs are ruptered.Sorry for the rant.

author: DrG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2020, 08:33:31 pm
content: Quote from: ZaphodBeeblebrox on July 09, 2020, 07:57:06 pmWith regard to:Yes, I know, "we don't have the production capacity" or "we are unable to obtain parts". The former can actually be adressed by outsourcing production and the latter, well, the same thing applies: put in a huge order and watch the magic happen. Besides, the open source community didn't seem to have this "unable to obtain parts" thing (correct me if I'm wrong here).Here is an interesting video featuring Erika Earl, whom I *think* could be described as an audio engineer (and more)https://www.namm.org/nammu/contributors/erika-earlAs I understand it, she was enlisted by the JPL VITAL team with a specific function for parts procurement (and some other things I guess, but that is the part I am focusing on). She speaks in the video of the Supplyframe platformhttps://supplyframe.com/and yes, italmostsounds like a commercial.She found it valuable and they did get it done and there certainly were requirements. Any opinions on that aspect? - I mean that literally, I am not an EE and could probably only design a runny nose if I had a cold, but not much else. I do find find the thread an interesting one.

author: Smokey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 09, 2020, 09:55:12 pm
content: So most of the arguments being made are assuming pre Corona virus lockdown supply chain and vendor availability options. "Just order more parts, what's the problem?". That completely ignores the fact that whole factories were shut down, whole supply chain shipping options were shut down, and whole global economies were shut down. That video with the descriptions of parts sourcing issues from the JPL supply chain person really makes that clear. They needed to do a new design based on stuff they could actually get. Whether the assembly has five parts or thousands of parts, The unavailability of just one part is a show stopper. Halt production. And I'm not sure if you caught that part at the end about the BOM freeze. Even for non-life critical applications oftentimes you can't just make part and vendor substitutions at will. Being design engineers I know for sure that we should appreciate the fact that just because the data sheets look the same on first pass does not mean the parts are interchangeable in a specific application. In this case, the consequences of part incompatibility isn't another BOM revision and maybe some RMAs, it's dead people.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 08:30:20 am
content: Quote from: Smokey on July 09, 2020, 09:55:12 pmIf you can say that about production stuff, then you can say the same, ever more so, about hastily hacked together solutions.And therein lies a possible problem with the entire concept in the first place.Perhaps it was simplynever possibleto develop something like this so quickly when a lot of supply chains and production systems of any type were shut,andthe product was required to save lives and not take them.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 09:10:11 am
content: About ramping up production: My experience is, that ramping up some parts of production is not hard. The PnP machine easily can handle larger quantities, more shifts. Same goes for injection moulding. And the manual parts of assembly can be augmented by more people, or smarter organisation. This is usually not the hard part.What I've seen is that the bottleneck is usually the testing of the device. They very likely functionally test each and every ventillator before shipping it. And the test bench of this is going to be the bottleneck. For example, if is possible that they have an artificial lung, government approved, calibrated, specifically designed to test ventilators. And then you need to connect your device to this, and do a x hour burn in test, to avoid early failures, and to prove your device is assembled correctly. Could be two hours, could be 24 hours, who knows? The test length probably was designed to reduce the chance of early failure to the ppm level. And that lung with all the sensors and equipment connected to it is very time consuming to put together, very expensive, and requires exotic parts, that you need to order yourself. And when you order them, they have a lead time. And very expensive. So if you want to just 2x or 3x your throughput, you might just pull in more shifts.But you want x10? Invest hundreds of thousands in equipment, that will just sit there afterwards? Hire people in the middle of the pandemic for a new job to work at night? What if you just run out of factory floor space, because all these require space. Pull up a building next to it? Or assemble medical equipment in tents?

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 09:29:25 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on July 10, 2020, 08:30:20 amIt might have been possible,iffthe right skills were available. That means aworking teamwith thespecificdomain knowledge, implementation skills, manufacturing experience, supply line experience.A group of amateurs was doomed to failure. The American good-ole-boy "its just like shooting swamp rats" attitude is no more than a fantasy.OTOH, thebetteramateurs were able to help with making things like face masks/visors. Even there I've seen people want to dosomethingwithout having any clue whether the result would be acceptable and/or usable.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 09:37:12 am
content: Quote from: tggzzz on July 10, 2020, 09:29:25 amYou mean like Medtronics and other makers that already had and produced existing working certified designs?

author: SerieZ
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 09:46:14 am
content: Quote from: NANDBlog on July 10, 2020, 09:10:11 amYou are correct. Every single PCB inside the Ventilator is ICT ,Functionally and/or burn in tested and the final assembled machine as well undergoes several testing. Every single machine is signed off and not just shipped like a regular product either. This happens in several facilities (supplier and the company who builds the final assembled machine as well).Just think about it: The Global market leader used to produce maybe 1500 Ventilators a Year and now the USA alone wants100000ASAP.Regarding the rest of the Thread: a noble pursuit those DIY Ventilators and developed in a month or two by Nasa/Tesla... Ventilators but not quite feasible IMHO for many many reasons.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 09:59:48 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on July 10, 2020, 09:37:12 amAmongst others, and possiblycompetentnew entrants into the field.Established manufacturers ought to be looking at preserving their reputation after the immediate crisis has passed. They might take actions to ensure that "panic products" aren't associated with their name.

author: Smokey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 12:33:30 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on July 10, 2020, 08:30:20 amI think we are converging. I do think the hacked together solutions were doomed to failure for a whole number of reasons including parts issues, complexity, and especially specialized knowledge and experience, which all should have obviously put the project out of reach of your average garage maker-gineer but didn't for a lot of people who still had delusions of saving the world.But from what I can tell about the JPL solution, it doesn't look very hacked together. It looks more mars rover like than an ambubag squeezed by a windshield wiper motor between two pieces of plywood controlled by an Arduino. They apparently had the kind of team that could do the work and the understanding that they needed to source parts they could still get even with the jacked up supply chain.The Medtronic guys certainly know how to make a ventilator, but that doesn't mean they know how to make a new model ventilator super quickly. That's sort of like asking Tektronix to make a new scope model super quickly. That's not how that company works. They take their damn sweet time, and everyone knows it. Instead pass the proven spec to the skunkworks teams and let them do what they do best with the implementation.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 01:28:00 pm
content: Quote from: Gyro on July 07, 2020, 09:24:13 pmBy total cost of litigation, the US does lead (followed by Canada and the UK). But in terms of litigiousness (number of lawsuits per capita), the US is only #5. The UK is #6. Places 4 through 1 are Austria, Israel, Sweden, and Germany!!Source:https://www.jurorsrule.com/10-most-litigious-countries-in-the-world/What I find very interesting is that the US is fifth place by a pretty wide margin. Another page I found listed these numbers (cases/1000 people):1) Germany: 123.2/1,0002) Sweden: 111.2/1,0003) Israel: 96.8/1,0004) Austria: 95.9/1,0005) U.S.: 74.5/1,0006) U.K.: 64.4/1,0007) Denmark: 62.5/1,0008 ⁠) Hungary: 52.4/1,0009) Portugal: 40.7/1,00010) France: 40.3/1,000(The source of those numbers is said to be ‘Exploring Global Landscapes of Litigation’ by Christian Wollschlager, a 1998 book. Bear in mind that IMHO, frivolous lawsuits in USA peaked in the 80s and 90s, but were never as big a problem as the media made it out to be.)

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 02:55:52 pm
content: Quote from: Smokey on July 10, 2020, 12:33:30 pmNobody is saying they had to make a new design, just make more of what they already produced.Let's be serious here, if it wasthat important, like war-time important, like everyone-dying important, the government could have made that production happen.There was literally nothing stopping that production happening but government mandated shutdowns and fear.Let's be practical, whether those mythical 100,000 units came from backyard labs or from existing manufacturers, it still requires very similar levels of local and global logistics to make that happen.Remember, even during the worst of this whole thing,people were still working keeping society running, by several accounts up to40% of the workforcewere still out there doing their thing. This could have included emergency manufacture of medical equipment if it was so mandated.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 03:17:32 pm
content: I've been through production ramp up on equipment with quality controls. The analogy often used is making babies. You want 100,000 babies it is pretty easy to line up the means of production. But there is this one critical nine month process step. No matter how big you make the pipe or how hard you push it, it takes most of a year before product starts flowing.In the real case the process steps are usually not as long, nor as impossible to change, but there are many more of them. A moment's inattention and the whole thing slams to a halt.

author: DrG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 04:02:36 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on July 10, 2020, 02:55:52 pmWell, a couple of things come to mind and I may be wrong. BLUF:Sometimes companies and governments are too big to get the job done quickly and efficiently. It is sometimes hard to get out of their own way. Sad as that is.I have always enjoyed reading about the Manhattan project. I remember seeing a Government person (it may have been military, I can't remember) talking about it in a documentary. This particular documentary featured the amazing coalescence of effort that was required. The individual noted that today, we could probably not get the environmental impact statement completed in the time that the entire project took - sobering.Ventilator shortage was recognized well before Covid and at the time of SARS and through EBOLA, the US was apparantlytryingto find a solution see:https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/business/coronavirus-us-ventilator-shortage.htmlMedtronic did, in fact, ramp up production (by 40% according to this press release in March -http://newsroom.medtronic.com/news-releases/news-release-details/correction-medtronic-continuing-increase-ventilator-production).

author: SparkyFX
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 10, 2020, 09:05:03 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on July 09, 2020, 07:35:16 amIt was a move that got them out of the line of fire, because they (as all medical device manufacturers) probably have or see a very limited ability to ramp up and still need to supply customers in the future. At the same time they avoid allegations to work by market rules (law of supply and demand) in times of a crisis. Money might not even be a thing when a government is involved, unless someone tries to make it "a deal".I guess they could make more test equipment themselves and ship it, unless calibration is involved the type of part required is basically in their machines anyway or because they have spare parts to keep the few they have running. Unfortunately outsourcing this kind of work is also a typical thing to do in the industry.Maybe the ventilators even have a built in self test to be used while in service. Two machines might even be able to proof each other during a burn in phase to take that out of the equation, but that was probably never in the spec sheet. But yeah, without a proper test jig even the whole license build is too risky to do.There might be more limiting factors, like fixed times to dissipate chemicals involved (plastic softening agents, glue) or certain parts built to order (e.g. injection molded plastic). I don't think hiring employees or standard parts are a limiting factor as during lock down unemployment went up anyway, although the request was before that.That NASA can pull their own device off is no wonder, they know how to supply oxygen to people in a vacuum, have experience with these parts and their complications and most medical requirements.