Company insight
Predictable medical micro moulding
One of the most important factors of a business relationship is reliability. From a solid basis of trust and predictability, products and services can be depended upon. Aaron Johnson, vice-president of marketing & customer strategy at Accumold, elaborates on how to ensure reliability from a micro moulding partner.
N
o one likes to be predictable. We all consider ourselves unique, disruptive and creative. But
predictability when working with a micro moulding company is something to be applauded and embraced. What is required is consistency and delivery, in line with or exceeding expectations.
But it is what motivates this ability to be predictable and to create innovative medical parts and components time and time again that is important and which those medical OEMs embarking on a micro moulding project must be aware of when selecting a micro moulding partner.
There are some givens that a micro moulding partner must be able to exhibit and which can probably be best described as capabilities. For example, and most fundamentally, micro moulders must be equipped with sophisticated micro moulding machines that can produce micro parts repeatably. But even here we need to become a little more granular. How many micro moulding machines reside in-house at the micro moulder’s facilities, and how much expertise and experience is there in-house to truly get the best results?
Tried and tested
Successful micro moulding outcomes, however, are not just the result of having a room full of micro moulding machines. Upstream and downstream from the moulding process itself, a micro moulder must also have competence and experience of design for micro moulding (DfMM), be able to provide material advice and assistance, produce micro tooling in-house, have access to micro additive manufacturing (AM) technologies, undertake validation in-house and also be expert in automated assembly.
Fundamental to the success of the production of micro plastic parts is tolerance attainment. As such, product development is all about risk mitigation, ensuring that tolerance ‘drift’ is managed and kept within the parameters that ensure integrity of end- use parts and components.
So saying, the focus is on control, and to fully control the development of a product from initial design to final automated assembly all expertise and technology used must be under one roof. A fundamental question from the get-go is to ask whether your chosen supply partner is truly vertically integrated. But if the answer is ‘yes’, that is not enough to guarantee success. An experienced and vertically integrated micro moulder must also be able to offer scalability and also a sustainable and predictable continuity of supply. It is demonstrably the case that these attributes are as important, if not more important, than in-house capabilities but are frequently overlooked when assessing a micro moulding partner.
Alleviating risk Scalability, sustainability and predictability are all interconnected. If you are talking with a micro moulder with 20 micro injection moulding machines, will they have the capacity to accommodate your volume demands? Also, how big are their facilities? You may require millions of parts year after year. Is there the physical space to accommodate a comprehensive production cell that can fulfil such demands? Put quite simply, without the space to accommodate this scale of supply and the associated manufacturing cells, your chosen partner may be found wanting.
Also, to sustain supply over many years, you need to be persuaded of the robustness
Medical Device Developments /
www.nsmedicaldevices.com
of the supply partner that you are dealing with. How long have they been in business? How deep are their pockets? Can they survive recessionary (or pandemic- associated) downturns? Today it is all about continuity of supply; supply chain predictability is vital. This predictability can only be guaranteed if a micro moulder can boast the relevant capabilities and experience and combine them with a financial resilience and size of operation that can accommodate high- volume manufacturing over extended periods of time.
From a due diligence point of view, seeking evidence of business sustainability and infrastructural capacity are perhaps the simplest to ascertain. Company longevity, turnover, profitability and investment profiles are all matters of importance. See whether your chosen micro moulding partner is just breaking even or has the wherewithal to be with you and your project for the life of the product.
And when you visit a micro moulding
facility, assess the size available for your manufacturing cell. Just because the parts being made are small does not mean that the premises should necessarily be small. To accommodate high volume micro moulding projects, an appropriately sized industrial facility is a must and is something that very few micro moulders can offer to ensure predictable supply in the short, medium and long term.
Selecting a micro moulding partner is a hugely important step. Be sure when making a selection that you are comfortable that five years from now, your micro moulder will have the wherewithal to still be sustaining predictable supply. ●
www.accu-mold.com 51
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