Silicone clamping pins
The solid aluminium clamping pins introduces large stress concentrations in the prostate slice, causing the slice to fracture into several pieces. One way to reduce this is to have a soft matrix between the clamps and the slice. One easy way to do this is to mold silicone around the clamping pin tips, to hopefully reduce the stress consentration around the pins. Therefore, some time was spent researching silicone clamping pins, and their effectiveness. This page covers this process
Iteration 1
For the first iterations, 4 molds for 4 different pin tips were designed and 3D-printed. The pin base was made using 3mm lasercut MDF. The silicone used had a hardness rating of 10A (something). Pictures are shown below:
The results of these are shown in the video below:
In conclusion, this silocne prooved to be too soft and flexible. Therefore, another iteration using harder silicone was made.
Iteration 2
The next iteration was made using the same molds, but with 3mm acryll for the pin base, and some harder silicone, with a hardness rating of 60A. These can be seen in below.
These preformed a lot better. There were some movement in the slice still, but this required a lot of force. Much more than what the milling bit in the CNC should introduce. Therefore, it is worthwile to test the clamps together with some frozen turkey slices to check how much movement is allowed in the frozen slice. In addition, it should be investigated if medical grade silicone is good enough in terms of hardness and cleanliness.