Revision 12

We are done improving the design for now. This is Revision 12. With just two Cams (small and large) and bag movement via the Bag Sled, we can adjust our ventilator to accommodate a wide range of potential patients, all done mechanically!

Kahanu Funded

Kahanu open source ventilator project receives $250,000 funding from Hawai‘i Community Foundation

Coventor Congratulations

We are part of an international consortium of emergency ventilator designers. Groups from all parts of the world jump on a daily call at noon Hawaii time. Today we heard awesome news! One of the groups got the first FDA approval for emergency use.

Wall-to-Wall

As we put the finishing touches on our bridge ventilator design, the immensely talented Wall-to-Wall Studios team is contributing some elegance and style to our otherwise simple and durable device. Here’s one of several concepts they’ve shared.

Madman Engineer

Jeffrey Hayashida is an absolute madman engineer. We are getting feedback to target lower air volumes. Jeff is temporarily on Maui. Our unit is on Oahu. So he rigs up a system in his garage to quickly test out new setups.

KITV Coverage

Nicole Tam of KITV4 News (Hawaii’s ABC affiliate) filed this segment on Kahanu tonight.

Manufacturing

Peek at more Kahanu Ventilator parts being machined by the good folks at Bear Machinery in Kaneohe. Hawaii designed and manufactured.

Hunting for Parts

Tackling manometers and other sensors, lab testing, custom covers, and other things. It may not seem like a big deal but it is taking us hours each day to call around and find manufacturers that have parts we can buy. Designing something in two weeks is already hard. Doing that when the world is out of stock of many things adds to the fun. May the supply gods look down on us favorably this week…we plan to start production in days.

Distributed Engineering

With the team in different locations, we’ve use Google Hangouts from day one to coordinate our daily Kahanu engineering meetings and to engineer various parts. This has been tricky since we have to split up hardware to Oahu, Maui, and California, run tests, then ship overnight to the next team member. Usually just one of us has hardware in hand. The rest of use have to use our imagination. It’s not especially efficient but we are making this remote team work.

From Olin Lagon on Facebook.

TV Segment

Thanks to Hawaii News Now, Hawaii’s joint NBC/CBS affiliate, for this story on our project.