technology has been a part of dentistry for a few years,” said Gutmann, but with newer machines such as the XT H 225 “we can go to greater depths of anatomical evaluation.” While not envisioning MicroCT for use directly on patients, “using it has opened our eyes and minds to a different way of looking at the environment where we work.”
The Benefi ts of CT Scanning
In fact, Jesse Garant, founder of Jesse Garant—Metrol- ogy Center (Windsor, ON, Canada) saw such an oppor- tunity in CT-based metrology services that this has been the company’s primary offering since inception. “We have ten different industries that we work for right now but medical device is one of our top four for our revenue for CT,” he said. Since CT metrology is still relatively new, he observed that medical device manufacturers new to the technique tend to start using it to diagnose failures. “They are looking to troubleshoot a device, either in pre- production or in production for a given fl aw that they’re experiencing,” Garant explained. They are looking for ‘hidden’ fl aws due to the material, such as porosity or uneven wall thickness, or mechanical failure. “Once they are educated on the value of CT, we can start to pull them into product qualifi cation in pre- production,” he said. This includes product qualifi cation such as fi rst article inspection or product validation after testing such as for temperature, vibration testing, mechani- cal testing on prototypes and qualifying the internals of parts before production begins.
“CT is especially useful for clear molded parts, a common item in medical manufacturing. A vision system would have dif- fi culty measuring some of those parts because they are often clear and refl ective,” he explained. Somewhat surprisingly, they use their own purpose-built CT machines all calibrated to NIST traceable artifacts. “We started out years ago acquiring differ- ent systems, but we have since become quite tech-savvy and build or modify all of our in-house CT systems,” he said. “It gives us a lot more versatility on the systems than a standard off-the-shelf system you would buy because we are a service provider and we see thousands of different parts a year now. We want to pair the proper machine with the part coming in, to always give the client the best result.”
High-Speed Inspection There are numerous places for metrology and inspection in production as well as analysis and design. Zeiss Industrial
Metrology (Maple Grove, MN), a provider of metrological CT systems with its Metrotom series, is also seeing the value of more tailored, purpose-built high-speed inspection systems built around CT. Their new offering is the VoluMax inline CT system. “VoluMax is something in-between non-destructive testing and metrology,” explained Dr. Marcin Bauza, director of new technology and innovation for Zeiss. It resembles the high stability and repeatability of metrological system while providing high speed, enabling 100% inspection capabilities. Each VoluMax installation is unique for the customer and circumstances. VoluMax was introduced by Zeiss to North America in the last year, according to Bauza.
The CT-XPRESS is equipped with a high productive 65W X-ray tube and a high-resolution fl at panel detector, making it a truly transportable, desktop CT scanner ideal for medical parts.
“It can perform metrological tasks when necessary be- cause its technical base is similar to the Metrotom CT,” he explained. “The key advantage is I do not have to calibrate this machine during each scan with, say, NIST traceable artifacts, such as in a master gauge process. I can inspect a part and provide detailed analysis of internal defects and compare the part geometry to a solid model of nominal part.” He also noted that with its emphasis on speed—criti- cal for in-line inspections—it may not have the same level of resolution as Metrotom. However, it can measure and inspect parts in seconds or even obtain subsecond throughput with multiple part scans. It measures certain metals such as cast aluminum, even titanium, as well as the common plastics often used in medical devices. Another Zeiss offering in customized inspection systems that Bauza noted would be useful for medical devices is their SurfMax line of surface defects inspection systems. Using optics, automatic loading and a “white light based ap- proach”, defects, blemishes, cavities or pores typically hard to observe by human inspectors as well as vision systems
February 2016 |
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