If you saw my post about the heart valves
https://community.glowforge.com/t/space-invaders-or-mitral-valve-leaflets-you-decide/7331
That project is coming along nicely. We now have made the heart valve embedded in the heart tissue (silicone) and soon will combine the GlowForge cut leaflets into the made one.
So what you can see here is the view of the left atrial floor as if you were looking into the ventricle (this is the direction blood would be flowing). The raised ring is essentially the boundary of your workspace (the walls would go all the way up, but then the instructor couldn’t see from the sides (the front will be obstructed and the learner will cut through it). Only the places you are supposed to suture into can hold sutures, and anywhere else they will rip out.
The cut leaflets will instead be the ones I showed in the earlier post. This was more a test of the assembly and my 3D printed molds, and how well the Dragon Skin 10F works as saturable heart tissue.
And we test fit the Carpentier ring (this is the point of the simulator is to learn to sew one of these in place, which is incredibly hard)
This is a 36mm partial ring (I also have full rings) still on the holder (when you are ready you cut those little stitches and it pops free). Note the space between the ring and wall is about 1-2mm which is all the space the resident has to work in, and in all sorts of awkward angles…
Hope to GF the frame for this over the weekend (although have some urgent priority 3D printing for a clinical trial I am running over the weekend too - and some wife urging to finish the cat perches for her office!)
It’s so cool to see real world applications of these technologies. Thanks for sharing, if I haven’t said that before, or recently.