Originally Published September 2000

EMDM Cover Products

Implant-grade stainless steel

Implant-grade stainless steel is supplied in wire, profile, bar, strip, sheet, and tubing forms. Annealed or cold-drawn thick-wall tubing is available in 6.0–14.0 mm OD and 1.15–8.30 mm ID; thin-wall tubes are supplied in outer diameters ranging from 0.4 to 50.8 mm with wall thicknesses starting at 0.05 mm. A broad variety of finishes and tensile strengths can be supplied from stock. Semifinished products can also be produced to customer specifications at manufacturing sites located around the world. The materials are typically used to fabricate bone screws, compression plates, coronary stents, and related devices. Sandvik Metinox, Sheffield, UK.

Assembly equipment

Developed specifically for the medical device industry, a rotary synchronized indexer can be configured to perform a range of assembly operations and to meet varying speed and precision requirements. All CleanCell components are made from stainless steel and other rustproof materials; the table surface is fabricated from abrasion-resistant coated aluminium. The equipment, which complies with US FDA requirements, achieves 120 cycles per minute and can accommodate up to 32 stations. Laminar flow units and safety guards can be easily integrated into the automated assembly machine. OKU Automatik, Winterbuch, Germany.

Plastic parts with holograms

A company has developed an in-process method that permits the incorporation of holographic images into miniature moulded plastic parts. The hologram resides in the tooling, which transfers the image to the part during moulding. The technology can be applied to disposable devices as a warning mechanism alerting medical personnel to the potential reuse of single-use products, according to the firm. The hologram can be engineered to disappear from the surface when the device is autoclaved, for example. By injection moulding a hologram into their packaging, OEMs can also use the technology to guarantee the authenticity of pharmaceutical and other products. Knudsen Plast a/s, Frederiksværk, Denmark.