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Medicine and Micro Linear Actuators

As trends in medicine point more and more toward performance of surgical procedures with robotic equipment, demand increases for microactuators and the other movement control utilities that actuate robotic surgical tools. Micro linear actuators can be found in much of the equipment used in the health care industry to improve people’s health and even save lives. In addition to their widespread use in robotic surgical equipment, microactuators are also put to use in

Robotics have been in use in surgical procedures since as early as the 1980s. They generally were limited in their use to relatively simple procedures, though their potential as surgical tools was obvious from the beginning. As time went on, and as technology improved, more complex procedures, which had previously been little more than a pipe dream for innovators in the industry, started to become possible. As actuator designers learn to make their products smaller and more precise, it makes possible the performance of complex processes on a very small scale; these processes can include surgical procedures. It is likely that microactuators will play a major role in the continued popularization and development of robotic surgical procedures.

In addition to their role in surgical equipment, microactuators can also be found controlling the movements of parts within medical scanning equipment. The ongoing challenge for actuator designers is to develop products that don’t interact negatively with other components in such medical equipment. MRI machines, for example, can be constructed out of only certain materials because they involve the use of nuclear magnetic resonance to generate images of bones, tissue and other structures. If industry has proved anything about itself, though, it has proved that it can solve such problems with enough time and investment.