Monitoring and control of gas flow rate in a pyrocarbon coating furnace for heart valves

A system employed to monitor and control gas flow rate in a pyrocarbon coating furnace for mechanical heart valve prostheses using D07-19B-type mass flow controller, USB2831-type data acquisition card and computer is developed. The mass flow controller primarily regulates the gas flow rate. The value of the gas flow rate is measured in real-time by the data acquisition card and computer. A program of the data acquisition card and computer is written by MFC of Visual C++ 6.0. The test results indicate that the system can achieve the purposes of real-time acquisition, display, storage and setting the gas flow rate. Thus, the development of the system provides data support for improving the quality of mechanical heart valve prostheses.