Post-It-like adhesive

[Eli Luong]

Hi,

I'm on a design team, which is an undergraduate course at my university. We are currently developing a surgical stapler and require an adhesive with certain properties. The adhesive will be bonding either titanium or stainless steel staples to whatever standard material most medical devices are made of. The adhesive must be temporary because the staples will be mounted onto this flap that is inside the stapler and the adhesive needs to keep the staples in place. After being stapled, however, the staples will fire out and the flaps will be retracted, and the adhesive should be able to somewhat easily detach the flap from the staples. Biocompatibility and biodegradability would be a plus, but we need to find an adhesive first. I'm wondering if anyone knows of an adhesive like this.

Thank you,

- Eli Luong

[tom]

Maybe a derivative of hide glue, you know, collagen? Tom

[Eli Luong]

Thanks for the speedy reply. Would you know where I should start looking? Do commerical products exist? Otherwise it wouldn't be good for us to have to mix the glue ourselves and figure it out if it actually works or not.

[dadiOH]

Maybe gum arabic?

-- dadiOH ____________________________

dadiOH's dandies v3.06... ...a help file of info about MP3s, recording from LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that. Get it at

[Markem]

Try 3M

Mark (sixoneeight) = 618

[tom]

Eli Luong wrote:Would you know where I should start looking? Do commerical products exist? Otherwise it wouldn't be good for us to have to mix the glue ourselves and figure it out if it actually works or not.

You can start looking for hide glue at your local Woodcraft or woodworking-type store. You've got to test_sometime_ Eli. "It wouldn't be good" to mix it yourself? Why not? For every success, there's probably a hundred failures(at least). Tom

[Larry Blanchard]

Why is this on the wreck? Especially with "MISMATCH" in the path. Methinks I smell a troll. Albeit a better one than normal :-).

[Pop]

Scotch adhesive putty; strong, nothing left behind, works great.

[mywebaccts (at) PLUGcomcast.ne]

Personally, I'm hoping it IS a troll. Having our future doctors use woodworking newsgroups to design surgical procedures doesn't make me look too kindly towards my dismal future old age!

Jack

Larry Blanchard wrote:

[Robert Bonomi]

Rubber cement.

(comment for the regulars here -- get your mind out of the gutter!)

[Michael Daly]

Leonard Lee left Lee Valley to start up a company that makes surgical equipment. Their first product was an improved scalpel - a surgeon approached Lee Valley to see if they could get a better scalpel for him; the woodworking carving handle he experimented with couldn't stand up to the autoclave. They also designed a jig for holding a hand in place for surgery.

Woodworkers - especially with minds like the Lees - seem to be a good place to start!

Mike

[Eli Luong]

This is an undergraduate design team course to design a prototype of a device, so it's likely a real device put into production would have consultation from more moedically-focused sources.