The goal of this MIT project was to develop a compact, portable pharmaceutical manufacturing system that could be reconfigured to produce a variety of drugs on demand, anywhere- to produce drugs for an unexpected disease outbreak, to treat rare diseases, or for clinical trials.

Dave Brancazio built and led a small engineering team that, working alongside a team of chemical engineers, designed and built several of the modules in this system. The one shown here is capable of automatically preparing a precise blend of active and inactive pharmaceutical ingredients, then pressing them into tablets.

 In projection micro-stereolithography, UV light passing through a modified digital projector is focused down to a tiny region. The resulting sub-micron resolution suits this technology well for biological applications.  The system we designed and built was used at MIT to create vascularized scaffolds for liver cells growth. 

Dave Brancazio worked on the world’s first 3D printer! That statement is both true and misleading. He joined Professor Emanuel Sachs’ team right around the time Sachs coined the phrase “Three Dimensional Printing” to describe the new process he’d invented, in which arbitrarily-shaped objects could be constructed, layer-by-layer, by selectively binding powder particles together using ink-jet printing. It wasn’t the only “Solid Freeform Fabrication” technology at the time- but it was the most versatile, and the only process capable of making ceramic and metal parts. Brancazio led the design and development of machines that ‘printed’ most of the parts shown here. Over time, the term “3-D Printing” was adopted by others as a catch-all phrase for computerized layer-based manufacturing processes (including MIT’s, and those of our competitors at the time!).

I was the lead mechanical engineer developing this ultra-sensitive, MEMS-based bio-detection platform.  The system detected picogram-levels of a wide variety of analytes in complex samples, including bacteria, viruses, and proteins.  The design required compact mechanisms for reliable fluidic, thermal, electrical, and mechanical engagement to disposable cartridges, custom valves and peristaltic pumps, and enclosures.  We integrated the detection platform into a product capable of automated assay setup and walk-away operation.

This client needed help designing powered mechanisms to safely operate the proposed, 10’ per side, pop-up “Performance Cube” which would automatically transform from a closed cube to an open performance space in a public space.  They had a partially complete design but needed help with the actuation. 

 Work on this project included the design and testing of a robotic positioning system capable of reliably picking up, transporting, and releasing microfluidic cartridges. It needed to reliably make and break  electrical, optical, mechanical, fluidic, and pneumatic connections to the chip.

 For this client, we proposed and then implemented several improvements to linear drive mechanisms in order to improve mechanical reliability and patient safety. 

 The client, a software company, needed an inexpensive way to mount a commercial credit-card reader to a tablet. The reader needed to slide between two stable positions.  Work included design, analysis, prototyping, and vendor selection for production runs.

Dave Brancazio led the mechanical team that designed and built this high-throughput, fully automated DNA processing workstation.  The machine produced thousands of reactions per day for both PCR and cycle-sequencing applications. It integrated 96-channels of nanoliter pipetting, chilled micro-plate storage, manipulation of reagents and samples, barcode reading and data tracking, programmable thermal cycling and decontamination, and a four-axis robot with an automated tool-changer, all designed in-house. Work was supported by a $5M NIH grant. This machine was commercialized and marketed internationally under the name “Parallab 350”

Dave Brancazio, a keyboards player who often plays in marching band settings, is interested in developing custom, portable, acoustic keyboard-based instruments to suit that environment. Here are some of his projects.

This client needed help animating his life-sized, fiberglass cow for an automated display. On command, and with music blaring, “Darla the cow” would emerge from her ‘barn.’ We constructed and tested a two-stage pneumatic actuator to allow her to rise in a dramatic fashion. This project was quite challenging because of cost and space constraints.