Micromechanical counter device with highly advanced cycle count for recording of up to 9900 sterilization events

Abstract:
In this paper a micromechanical counter device with a counting capacity of 9900 sterilization events is presented. This is achieved by utilizing two gear wheels having a different number of increments. Two design variants are proposed with parallel arrangement and serial arrangement of the gear wheels. For each design variant, the gear wheels are driven together by a single shape memory alloy (SMA) wire actuator. The basic functionality of the device was verified on a hot-plate by performing over 100 temperature cycles. Experimental results suggest, that the design with a serial arrangement of the gear wheels show a higher counting reliability.