Med-Tech Innovation Micro moulding
made from raw PP. The fi nal part weighed 0.1 g, had an ID of 0.6 mm with a 0.17 mm wall thickness, and a wall thickness at the tip of 0.1 mm. The tool for this application used two extremely small core pins sitting head to head, which would have broken using the high pressures of conventional micro injection moulding. These achievements may in themselves be impressive, yet the developers do not know what the limits are for this technology. In the case of the “tip” part mentioned above with a 0.075 mm thickness along 15 mm with PP, when working on this project, Ultrasion generated fl ashes at the top of the tip due to a mould misalignment. The company has been unable to measure these fl ashes precisely, but they are defi nitely at least as thin as 0.003 mm along 3 mm. The customer was astonished at this because it is believed that PP is not supposed to fl ash at these thicknesses; this led to the development of parts that it had previously thought were impossible to manufacture.
Real innovation is possible Very infrequently, technological innovations appear that not only allow for the re-evaluation of how existing manufacturing processes are undertaken, but also open up areas for real product innovation. As medical device manufacturers struggle to design and manufacture ever smaller components and parts with increasingly greater functionality, they are fi nding that manufacturing technologies are unable to keep pace with their requirements.
Figure 3: An eye retina surgery tip weighing 0.1 g, with an internal diameter of 0.6 mm and a wall thickness of 0.17 mm, and at the tip a wall thickness of 0.1 mm
This novel ultrasonic micro moulding technology was
specifi cally designed for micro moulding applications and as such addresses material wastage, energy wastage and tooling issues, while at the same time inducing characteristics in melted raw materials that open up a range of new possibilities in medical product design and manufacture.
Enric Sirera is Sales Director at Ultrasion SL Barcelona, Spain, tel. +34 935 944 700 email:
esirera@ultrasion.com,
www.ultrasion.com
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