As the third day of February, all of us here at WB Engineering would like to remind you guys about the Autodesk Inventor of the Month Winners that are now featured on calendars, books and a lot more for 2010!

As we mentioned earlier when voting first began, Cochlear BAS has won over February with an advanced hearing aid created with The Baha System to specifically target the center of the inner ear to allow the user to experience high volume of soothing clear sound.

The Baha system uses direct bone conduction to transfer sound to the cochlea, the auditory center of the inner ear. This method has the advantage of bypassing the outer and middle ear–which might be blocked, damaged or otherwise impaired–when transmitting sound vibrations to the inner ear to give individuals with hearing loss clearer sound in everyday situations like phone calls and group meetings.

“To design the bone conduction implant and the external sound processor that constitute the Baha system, we need to be able to precisely design, engineer and manufacture parts on the scale of one hundred-thousandths of a millimeter,” said Daniel Radberg, senior design engineer and CAD manager at Cochlear BAS, responsible for the Baha product line.

“Autodesk Inventor is invaluable in helping us achieve that precision by giving us detailed 3D views of our products before we’ve built anything.”

Traditional hearing aids use air conduction to transmit sound through the ear canal. People with a damaged middle ear, however, cannot benefit from this type of device. The Baha system, by contrast, uses a titanium implant in the skull bone behind the ear. An external sound processor snaps onto the implant, transmitting sound vibrations from the outside world directly to the cochlea, bypassing damaged or problematic areas.

Congratulations, Cochlear BAS and Happy February fellow prototypers!

Credit Sources: Design Taxi.com | wb-3d.com

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