Reducing Surgical Hand Tool Size Without Sacrificing Performance

For the surgical hand tool designer looking to deliver all of the performance objectives in the most sleek and lightweight package possible, the choice of electric motor is a key consideration.

Surgical hand tools require a minimum level of power for a given application. With higher power requirements you will need larger motors, which leads to a heavier and bulkier tool. Fortunately, there are many options to reduce size and weight of the tool while maintaining performance.

The first example: Optimize windings to the supply voltage.  The more voltage available to the motor, the faster it can turn at any given torque and so the more power it will produce. Thus, a higher voltage allows a smaller motor to be used to achieve the same output power.  The windings within the motor can be optimized to maximize the power at convenient battery voltages. A good motor design partner can do this by tweaking the diameter of the wire in the motor as well as the number of times the wire wraps around the stator (turn count).

Read the white paper to learn about the other five options or discuss with a Portescap engineer.