EBME Forums Forums Maintenance Technical Assistance Ultrasound probe housing cracks

Has anyone had any problems with cracks on probe housings? It is certainly not being dropped - perhaps heat, gel or cleaning wipes? Any ideas or experience of this? Thanks.
Andrew

Big cracks – dropped. Little cracks (crazing) – alcohol wipes. Any more information can only follow from interrogation of the user (I would suggest thumb-screws, initially).

There are several degrees of being dropped. A culmination of small bangs or knocks over time may eventually cause damage to the plastic housing. How old are the probes? Inappropriate cleaning material may cause the plastic to become brittle eventually. So long as the cracks don't allow fluid into the gubbins, they should be ok. You can carry out an enclosure leakage test on the probe by immersing the end (not the cable) of the probe in normal saline and carrying out an electrical safety test. I think most probes are type BF. This is how Philips test their TOE probes.

There are three or four small cracks perhaps 4mm long spreading up from the edge of a housing moulding. The probe was apparently fine for 3 years then had to be replaced three times in one year. No user changes or clinical load changes that I can discover. Full safety tests were carried out each time as Bill has described. Cleaning material used on recommendation from ultrasound, but to me it looks to be the culprit. Have there been any alerts on this?

Thanks guys
Andrew

Some of the probe housing do actually crack due to the quality of palstic material used in them. This is commonly seen in GE probes linear and convex esp 546L C348 etc The cracks appear as hairline ones at the corners and with time the cleaning slutions and gels seep in through them causing delamiantion of the lens material (rubber housing)and eventually casuing element failure.
GE has addressed this issue to a certain extend in their new probes.
These cracks can be repaired and the whole housing repainted and tested for electrical safety. I am sure there a lot of companies in US which provide these services.

Interesting Manoj, exactly what has been happening here although we have never got to element failure. The puzzle is that nothing happened for a while then it all came at once. There is another machine with the same probe that is perhaps used less but has not given any reported problems. Could this be a clue to actual probe defect? Yet the company have checked, repaired and passed it. This is a Pie Data 485 Anser, probe is 3.5Mhz R40.

I do a fair amount of repair on probes in this part of the world and have even set up a small lab to do these repairs ,ofcourse with the help of an american company. About of 60% of the probes which come to me for repairs are not element failures,but appear on the image as one.
If you are keen to know more i could forward a presentation on the work we do.

I would be very happy to see yor presentation Manoj, we have two vivid7, and a couple of philips machines which have some holes and cracks on the rubber top. I thought that liquid silicone could do the job until they are serviced properly.
looking forward for further discussion
best regards Milan