The global medical device market stands at $350 billion, with projections for 4.9% compounded annual growth through 2020. This growing industry has manufacturers accelerating design and production to get products to market quickly, often requiring new materials and advanced manufacturing technologies.

Also covered is how in the industry, medical device original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are continuing to turn manufacturing over to one-stop shops and are demanding more from their suppliers, significantly changing the complexity of contract manufacturing work. It used to be that most contract manufacturers were told what products to manufacture and how to manufacture them. In the last decade, that has shifted. Today, contract manufacturers provide services from product concept and development to highly specialized manufacturing, supply chain management, and delivery to the end customer.

Top suppliers are partners who are tightly integrated into the supply chains of the OEM – they may also manage other smaller and non-strategic suppliers on behalf of the OEM.

Learn more about the industry in this forecast webinar, sponsored by Epicor Software.

(Above photo) A schematic diagram of the idea of electrons dynamics control. Photo credit: Lan Jiang, An-Dong Wang, Bo Li, Tian-Hong Cui & Yong-Feng Lu.

Femtosecond lasers are capable of processing any solid material with high quality and high precision using their ultrafast and ultra-intense characteristics. With the continuous development of laser technology, ultrafast laser manufacturing would hopefully become one of the primary methods employed in high-end manufacturing in the future.

Recently, researchers realized a new method termed electrons dynamics control for ultrafast laser micro/nano fabrication. For the first time, the localized transient electrons dynamics in laser fabrication can be actively controlled to manipulate material properties, which greatly enhances the efficiency, quality, uniformity, and precision of laser fabrication.

This research is conducted by the group of Professor Lan Jiang from Beijing Institute of Technology, in cooperation with Professor Tian-Hong Cui from Minnesota University, Twin City, and Professor Yongfeng Lu from Nebraska University, Lincoln. Their research results were recently reviewed in Light: Science and Applications.

Throughout the past decade, the research group has devoted their efforts to studying novel methods of manufacturing based on electrons dynamics control. They used the temporally/spatially shaped ultrafast laser to control the localized transient electron dynamics (e.g., density, temperature, and distribution); furthermore, they modified the localized transient material properties and adjusted material phase change; eventually, they implemented the novel fabrication method.

They established a multiscale model of ultrafast laser materials interactions and predicted that the temporally/spatially shaped ultrafast pulses can control the laser material interaction processes. Furthermore, on the basis of the theoretical predictions, they experimentally verified the validity of the electrons dynamics control method. In addition, they proposed and implemented a multiscale measurement system for observing femtosecond laser ablation dynamics from femtosecond scale to second scale, which provided experimental evidences for the proposed mechanism.

Using this method, they greatly improved fabrication efficiency, quality, repeatability, and precision, as well as extended the fabrication limits of laser manufacturing. The new method has resolved some critical manufacturing challenges and already been applied to a series of major Chinese national projects.

This novel method has realized the active control of localized transient electrons dynamics in the laser fabrication process for the first time. Furthermore, it has opened the wide exciting possibilities in the control of fabrication on electron level, which may provide revolutionary contributions to high-end manufacturing, material properties manipulation, and chemical reactions control.

Materials Park, Ohio and Cambridge, U.K. – Granta Design officials have announced improved support for the growing number of users of CES Selector, a tool for materials selection and graphical analysis of materials properties. In response to customer feedback, three new product options are now available: CES Selector Team, CES Selector Enterprise, and CES Selector Project.

CES Selector enables smart materials choices. Users innovate and evolve products, quickly identify solutions to materials problems, confirm and validate materials selections, and reduce material and development costs. As more people use the software as an integral component within the product design and development process, Granta has responded to customer suggestions for licensing and user management options that make it easier to provide the tool to new users and to support the work of development teams.

CES Selector Team enables members across a team to share and transfer licenses more easily and cost-effectively. Available in five-user license packs, this flexible product option is ideal for companies who want to enable more team members to try out the software, and for long-term projects where team members may change over time.

Designed for organizations that want to undertake an enterprise-wide roll-out of the software, CES Selector Enterprise supports the sharing of licenses across subsidiaries and locations, enterprise-wide – with volume discounts.

The third option is CES Selector Project. This license is suited to short-term projects and small numbers of users.

“At Granta we continually strive to make improvements to our solutions that offer real benefits to our customer organizations and individual users,” comments Dr. Charlie Bream, senior product manager for CES Selector. “After listening to our customers we’re pleased to offer these three product options that deliver the flexibility they need to make the most of the CES Selector software.”

Students at The University of Manchester have designed and built a 3D printed, low-cost robotic prosthetic hand that could provide a much cheaper alternative for amputees.

The hand’s joints are all fully posable with each individual finger and the thumb being able to move as well as make a fist. The functionality of the hand allows its user to do simple everyday tasks such as picking up items, eating using a knife and fork, typing, clicking a mouse, or opening doors. It can even play rock-paper-scissors.

But what also makes the prototype limb standout is its cost. The students built the hand for just £307 ($430) and reckon they can make it even less expensively. In comparison an advanced robotic prosthetic limb can start at approximately £25,000 ($35,000), going up to £60,000 ($85,000) if bought privately. More affordable robotic hands with just basic multi-grip functionality still start at £3,000 ($4,200).

The design won “best new development” in the Digital Innovation Challenge at the recent Industry 4.0 Summit and Factories of the Future Expo which was held at Manchester Central, in Manchester. Industry 4.0 is the term given to what some regard as the fourth industrial revolution.

The hand is the brainchild (and a final year Mechanical Engineering Master’s) of Alex Agboola-Dobson and his team – lead electrical engineer Sebastian Preston-Jensen, lead software engineer Panagiotis Papathanasiou and mechanical and software engineers Maximillian Rimmer and Shao Hian Liew.

According to the NHS around 6,000 major limb amputations are carried out each year in the UK alone. None-robotic Prosthetic Limbs available on the NHS are either purely cosmetic, whilst other more functional ones are simple plastic-molded limbs with hooks. This was also another inspiration for the team’s futuristic, but life like design.

“Not only do we want to make it affordable, we want people to actually like the look of it and not be ashamed or embarrassed of using or wearing it. Some traditional prosthetics can both look and feel cumbersome or, those that don’t, are extremely expensive. We think our design really can make a difference and we will be looking to commercialize the project in the future,” says Agboola-Dobson.

Connectivity is another key advantage of their design as it comes with blue tooth connection and an Android app for a smartphone. The hand is controlled by muscle sensors placed on the wearer’s arm that can be paired to the app, which was also designed by the group.

“The functionality is customised through the phone app, but the muscle sensors provide the control by moving the hand whenever necessary. It is really simple to use,” Agboola-Dobson says.

The actual manufacturing of the hand is by a type of 3D printing called stereolithography (SLA) printing, which uses a high quality resin plastic for production. Eventually the team are aiming to move to fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printing, which will make the hand even less expensive to produce, but will not lose any of its quality.

Dr. Carl Diver, from the School of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Civil Engineering, says: “We are really delighted for them, it was a great experience for them to pitch their idea in front of a panel of experts and the prize money will help them develop the idea further. This will be a great addition to their CV. We are very excited to see what the future holds for this group and their innovative creation.”